The 1 Way To Find Reason In Hard Times

Albert Camus and The Myth Of Sisyphus

To be happy is very probably not the meaning of life….
Otherwise, we humans would certainly be happier, wouldn’t we?

Life is so hard sometimes because we are not meant to live a comfortable life.

A tiger hunts.
A tiger catches its prey.
A tiger eats. And goes to sleep.

A human being chases progress.
Achieves progress.
Enjoys it for a second.
And chases the next progress even faster.

Ultimately, it is in the nature of man to always want more. Even if we are happy one second, we wonder what could not make us even happier the next second.

Even if we make our greatest childhood dreams come true, this happiness lasts for a few months at most. After that, we ask ourselves, what now? And automatically, life becomes harder to cope with again.

At the same time, human beings are always preoccupied with the question, who am I?

We search for our identity. And even if we think we know who we are for a fleeting moment, the world changes due to technological progress or a virus. We realize that we are not free and that the outside world will always be stronger than we are.

Life is so hard sometimes because the world shows us that we are just what we are, one person out of more than 7.7 billion people. And what is one human being supposed to do?

And who — except a few fellow human beings, if you’re lucky — cares if you find life hard?

Of course, all this doesn’t make life any easier.

Seeking lightness means either being filled with even more heaviness or enjoying it only for a few moments.

Albert Camus is one of the authors who best describes the heaviness and absurdity of life.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, An Essay on the Absurd, Camus describes the mythical story of Sisyphus, who is condemned in the underworld to move a heavy stone up a steep mountain.

Once he has made it up, the rock rolls down the other side of the hill. As Sisyphus descends the hill, he has a few moments of rest. Then the next hill awaits, and Sisyphus again carries his rock up a steep hill. And so it goes on for all eternity.

A very beautiful analogy of life. And how hard it can feel.

Camus ends his reflections on the myth of Sisyphus with the following words:

Therein lies the hidden joy of Sisyphus. His destiny is his own. His rock is his business. […]

Moreover, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At this particular moment when a man turns to his life, Sisyphus, returning to his rock, consider the series of disconnected actions that become his destiny as created by him, united under the gaze of his memory and soon sealed by death.

Thus convinced of the wholly human origin of everything human, a blind man who wants to see and knows that the night has no end, he is always on the move. Still, the stone rolls. […] This universe, which now no longer knows a master, seems to him neither barren nor worthless. Each gran of this stone, each mineral flashing in this mountain wrapped in night is a world of its own.

The struggle against mountains can fill a human heart. We must think of Sisyphus as a happy man.”