Sisyphus

A life well lived has nothing to do with success, fame, wealth. Is it perhaps a question of leaving a mark in the golden book of History? It is not the repetition of an act that nullifies its beauty, as long as this is worthy of being carried forward.

“If there is a personal destiny, there is no higher fate or, at least, there is only one, which man judges fatal and contemptible. For the rest, he knows he is the master of his days. In this subtle moment, in which man returns to his own life, a new Sisyphus returning to his boulder, in the gradual and slow descent, he contemplates the series of unconnected actions, which have become his destiny, created by himself, reunited under the glance of memory and soon sealed by death.

Thus, convinced of the exclusively human origin of all that is human, a blind man who wishes to see and who knows that the night has no end, he is always on the move. The boulder rolls again. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! We always finds our burden. But Sisyphus teaches superior loyalty, which denies the gods and lifts boulders. He too judges that all is well. This universe, now without a master, does not appear to him sterile or futile. Every grain of that stone, every mineral gleam of that mountain, cloaked in night, form, by itself, a world. Even the struggle to the top is enough to fill a man’s heart” (The myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, 1942).

Sisyphus who never finished his sentence. The condemnation that transforms his existence into a task, in his usual work. Sisyphus who can no longer help but push that boulder, and in seeing it roll he discovers the beauty of nature, the power of the forces that govern this world.

And again, up the impervious mountain, to the top, and at the last the boulder opens the way again. But every time the perspective is different, every time the boulder rolls to another slope. And Sisyphus’ mind is lost, seeing the boulder that crosses hills, then wooded slopes, and picking up speed it pushes to the sea. Each time a different landscape, each time a different slope.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (The myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, 1942).

And for a few moments the boulder stops. Ingenuity surpasses even the will of the gods, their punishments, their quarrels now dead under the dust of the centuries. Sisyphus rests, listens to the noises of the forest, the slow breathing of that stone so smooth due to the innumerable ascents and as many descents. Sisyphus is happy. For a brief moment he is happy. And without understanding the meaning of his existence, he manages to understand that it is worth living.