The Myth of Sisyphus

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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
To begin to think is to begin to be undermined by a kind of mental disgrace.
We can take it as a principle that anyone who does not resort to deception must act in accordance with what he believes to be true. Accordingly, a person who believes that life is absurd must live in keeping with that belief.
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
It happens that the ‘why’ arises, and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
We live on the future: ‘tomorrow,’ ‘later,’ ‘when you have settled down,’ ‘when you are older you will understand.’ And yet this is a remarkable inconsistency, for the future, in the end, leads only to death.
If we truly grasped that thought of death, our lives would be completely overturned; yet it is precisely through this feigned ignorance that we can harbor such a thought and still go on living as if nothing had happened.
And if, before all the spectacles this world presents, I can affirm the feeling that grips me, and the insight imposed on me by the search for knowledge, then I must sacrifice everything to preserve these certainties. I must sustain them by facing them squarely. Above all, I must regulate my actions in accordance with them and pursue them through all their consequences.
To live through a particular experience or a particular fate is to accept it fully, without holding anything back.
Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences: my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness, I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.
Until the day he reaches the boundary of physical death, Don Juan knows no sorrow. From the moment he attains awareness, laughter bursts forth and forgives everything. It is only when he harbors hope for the future that he becomes sad.
Man becomes accustomed all too easily. He sets out to earn money in order to live happily, and yet all the effort and the best part of his life end up devoted solely to making money. Happiness is forgotten; the means becomes the end.

It was too hard for me to understand this book.
This author, who ridicules and scorns all philosophies.
But there was something I could have in common with him, and I liked it.

The Myth of Sisyphus, especially its final image, feels less like an ancient tale and more like a mirror of our present lives.
Sisyphus pushes the stone upward, enduring and enduring, until it finally reaches the summit, only for it to fall back down again.
And then comes the gentle descent.
This is where my thoughts linger.
All of us are rolling our own stones within the same life. Reaching the top is no different from payday.
After receiving the drug called salary, we drift through a day or two of happiness, sliding down the easy slope.
And then, once again, we return to the bottom,
to push the stone upward, from below to above.

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