On this absurd life!

Decades ago, my best friend from high school proceeded to study physics in the Soviet Union.  Yes, that long ago where there was a big USSR on the maps!  In one of his earlier letters from there, he mentioned something being a Sisyphean struggle.  We went to the same school and here was this guy using words that I didn't know.  It is amazing how we can have forty kids in a classroom and how every one of us can come out with different experiences.  Somewhere, somehow, he had picked up on Sisyphus; what was I doing in school, right?

Anyway, as soon as I finished reading the letter, I was off to discover and understand the word "Sisyphean."

Since then, I have not lost track of that phrase nor that idea.

Perhaps I am reminded of that now because we are into the final stretch of the term.  The Sisyphus me has rolled the boulder almost to the top.  The boulder will start rolling down as the term ends.  And then, I get to do it all over again.  And again.

But, here is where I find Camus' take absolutely refreshing.  It is not a struggle at all.  I look forward to the term ending and then a new one beginning.

In the years past when I used to at least sit in on meaningless faculty meetings and conversations, the chit-chat often included colleagues remarking about how they were looking forward to the term coming to an end, or the academic year ending, and I would feel puzzled.  And, sometimes feel sorry for them feeling so trapped doing a job from which they constantly seem to dream of escaping.  Theirs was truly a Sisyphean struggle.

I almost always feel sad when the term ends because the ending comes just when I am beginning to know the students and understand what gets them and what doesn't. Two days ago, in one of my classes, I quoted Shakespeare's "parting is such sweet sorrow."  

But then, it is a wonderful lesson to remind me of the impermanence that our existence is.  As much as students come and students leave, we are born and we die.  In such a framework, the Sisyphean struggle is not about the boulder rolling down, but about Sisyphus finding happiness and contentment with what he does.  It is about me as the instructor beginning a term and ending it while being happy and content even as I know that I will be repeating this process all over again.

I am perhaps beginning to understand why my mother didn't think she has a raw deal in having to get up everyday thinking about what she was going to cook, and what chores she was going to do.  Not in the conventional thinking, but in a Camus' interpretation, hers is a Sisyphean contentment and happiness in doing pretty much the same thing day in and day out.  She was not cursed nor condemned to that punishment.

Pushing the rock up only to watch it roll down as we near the top is then not as absurd as it might seem.  Life  is what happens between birth and death.  In the initial stages, we learn to push the boulder.  And then we push, it rolls down, we push, it rolls down.  It is up to us to find happiness in this process.  If not, well, we die unhappy and miserable.

I, have no plans to die unhappy or miserable.