I am pleased to feature a guest post by Greg Hickey, a collaborator in the world of fitness and writing. Greg Hickey is a former Philosophy major, personal trainer, and baseball player, and current forensic scientist, endurance athlete, author and screenwriter. His blog KineSophy discusses topics in Philosophy and physical fitness, and a free ebook on these subjects is forthcoming. His debut novel Our Dried Voices is available on Amazon, and information on all his written work can be found on his website http://www.greghickeywrites.com.
Enjoy this post, and find more like it on Greg's blog, KineSophy.
Enjoy this post, and find more like it on Greg's blog, KineSophy.
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a
rock to the top of a mountain,
whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some
reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless
labor.” So begins existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’ famous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus.[1] According to Camus, Sisyphus was “the wisest and most prudent of mortals.”[2] The king
of Corinth, Sisyphus betrayed Zeus, king of the gods, in order to win fresh
water for his subjects. In return, Zeus sent his brother Hades to bring
Sisyphus to his death, but Sisyphus tricked the god of the underworld and held
him captive so that no mortal could die. When Ares, god of war, finally rescued
Hades and Sisyphus perished, he conned Hades into letting him return to Earth,
where he lived for many more years before Hades tracked him down and sentenced
him to the stone.
These descriptions
of his mortal exploits indicate Sisyphus was no common sinner, but a clever man
who was good to his kingdom, loved life and desired to remain on Earth for as
long as possible. And for this spirit the gods condemned him to the most rote
and eternally frustrating task in the afterlife. The man who lived to cheat
death did not merely die; he was sentenced to an endless existence of reiteration,
which the gods must have considered the exact opposite of the pleasures he
found in life.
The nature of
Sisyphus’ torture lies in this endless repetition. Each time he reaches the top
of the mountain, the stone falls back to the bottom again. He must push it up
the mountain not once, not twice, but over and over again for all eternity. Sisyphus’
bane is his consciousness. He knows the toll the last trip took on his body and
his will, the toll each previous trip took, and he knows he will have to go
through it all again. The parallels here to everyday human life are obvious if
we view life as a series of tasks to be completed and obstacles to be
conquered. And just as Sisyphus cannot escape his punishment, there is no hope
of succeeding finally and absolutely in life. We always face another task,
another obstacle, and a human lifetime is no match cosmically for time and
mortality.
Yet Camus reminds us
that “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”[3] Once Sisyphus comes to grips
with the inevitability of his lot, he regains a modicum of control. The rock
sits before him. He can drive it up the mountain once again. The gods who put
him there cease to matter. The task is in his power to complete. Each
successful trip up the mountain is a victory. Each restart at the bottom is an
opportunity. Therefore, Camus concludes, “the
struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must
imagine Sisyphus happy.”[4] For
Sisyphus, each step upward, each successful ascent, is another triumph over his
fatigue, over the gods and over his past, and these cumulative victories are
enough for his happiness.
For me the power of
the myth resides in the physical nature of Sisyphus’ challenge. This physicality
certainly reflects the era of the story’s original telling (after all, this is
the same culture that gave us the Olympics), but the ancient Greeks were not
short on great thinkers either (see Aesop, Archimedes, Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid,
Hippocrates, Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Sophocles and Zeno for
starters). Yet consider the diminished impact of the following revision of the
story:
The
gods condemned Steve to ceaselessly solving the same Sudoku puzzle. But each
time Steve was about to fill in the last number, all his work would disappear
and he was forced to start again from scratch.
I find it hard to
see the romantic luster of the original myth in Steve’s plight. We can imagine
poor Steve chained to a desk, hunched over a worried scrap of newspaper,
frantically jotting down numbers before they wash away, but he is hardly the
same noble figure as Sisyphus straining under his rock.
Does Steve’s fate
hit a little too close to home in comparison to our modern lives? Would our
feelings about the story change if the gods compelled Steve to try to solve
Fermat’s last theorem, cure cancer, or unlock the secret to thermonuclear
fusion? I think not. What makes Sisyphus’ story so compelling and so tragic is
its very tangible, physical nature. There are no half-measures, no
equivocations. Intellectual pursuits are too abstract, too indefinite, to carry
the symbolism of myth. But when the rock reaches the top of the mountain, the
rock reaches the top of the mountain. Sisyphus’ task is accomplished. Hades may
cause the rock to roll back down again or set a new peak in front of Sisyphus,
but these are new challenges and not continuations of one long endeavor.
Likewise, the pure
physical torment of Sisyphus’ task strikes a chord with us that the
intellectual equivalent does not. There is no end to Sisyphus’ agony as he
strains against his stone. His hands and shoulders scrape and bleed against the
jagged rock, sweat cascades down his brow, every muscle fiber in his body burns
and screams under the weight. Everyone sees Sisyphus’ pain. Everyone recognizes
his effort. And when he succeeds, we can all acknowledge his triumph.
I in no way intend
to diminish intellectual accomplishments. The genius of Leonardo da Vinci,
Marie Curie and Albert Einstein remains undisputed. But Camus’ Sisyphus
demonstrates the psychological power of physical accomplishment. Because of the
physical, tangible, definite nature of Sisyphus’ task, “his fate belongs to
him.”[5] Each summit of the
mountain is a victory of Sisyphus’ own making. “One must imagine Sisyphus
happy” because he has the power to conquer adversity time and time again.
Imagine what he could accomplish (physically, intellectually or otherwise) were
he not condemned to his rock. Would anyone doubt him any achievement to which
he set his will?
At its foundation, The Myth of Sisyphus reflects Camus’
belief that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is
suicide.”[6] If life is hopeless and
agonizing, is one ethically justified in taking one’s own life? Camus says no. The Myth of Sisyphus, as a defense of
that view, is an essay about an ethical choice represented by the image of
ceaseless physical toil. It teaches the power and virtue of exercising one’s
free will to overcome a physical challenge. And though Camus’ argument applies
to any obstacles encountered in the course of our lives, it is the physical
nature of Sisyphus’ challenge that gives the myth its vitality. In KineSophy, I delve more deeply into the connections
between physical and ethical action, and Camus’ essay provides a good introduction
on the subject. To be a Sisyphus is to take the first step to becoming a better
human being.
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