Tag Archives: Myth of Sisyphus

Sisyphus: The Hour of Consciousness

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Sisyphus watches the stone rush down toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again. It is during his return, that pause, that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering; that is the hour of consciousness.

Greenlandic trail

The evidence is in the absurd divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, a nostalgia for unity; those are the contradictions that bind together. If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.

Grecian cave

Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred.

(Extracts from Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.)

Where to Go Next

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You go to a place and, from there, you go to another. And another. And so on.

And then you go back or on to another place and get to where you started or to a new place that is the same as any other and think about where to go next.

Or as Albert Camus phrases it in his Myth of Sisyphus: Living under that stifling sky forces one to get away or to stay.