One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

Content Warning: Self-indulgent mind droppings, suicide

I am getting older, and I feel it more and more each day. It takes me longer to focus my eyes on the text messages that often await me on my phone each morning. If I walk more than a couple of miles, my joints certainly feel it. Now, now, whippersnapper, some of you are inevitably thinking you don’t know what aging is yet. And you’re right. But it’s why, I suppose, I’ve been so consumed by what comes next as of late—that and the fact that I will have a child who will be a legal adult soon.

I often go back to the brilliant work of Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” when feeling this way. I remind myself that we are indeed architects of our own happiness, no matter what that entails, and that we must find it in an absurd, seemingly meaningless world. We must not obsess over things we cannot control. In my previous post, I wrote about the dreams, big and small, of the people of Los Angeles, and I often think about how many people will likely never achieve their own, me included. The haphazard and arbitrary nature of our existence is, many times, a crap shoot where random encounters and seemingly benign choices change everything for people not even trying, while others who have worked themselves to exhaustion in pursuit of something greater never see the fulfillment of their dreams. Now I do believe we create some luck for ourselves, but again, it still takes some chances that materialize for some and not others.

For most of my life, dreaming has been what gave me some sense of meaning. Happiness was on the horizon time and time again. Each success, I told myself, was one step closer to the goal of true freedom as a travel writer, where I would meet people from all over and experience different cultures far away from the touristy areas.

But somewhere along the way, I figured out that I would have to ignore a lot of things around me I care about for my ADHD addled brain to focus long enough to write, and that it would be difficult to do that. There’s also the whole making enough money to survive part. (Shoutout to my Substack folks, as I now get $500 a year for this from subscriptions now. That’s seven months of water bills, y’all!)

In the past few years, I have actually been able to travel and write, and I still think that is what would make me happy. But I keep going back to the one thing that gives my life meaning now—outside of being a somewhat maladjusted husband and father— and that’s solving problems that help people around me. The thing is that it takes a lot of time. “But Warren, you’ve published two Substack articles in two days! You can find the time,” you may say. True. It also takes a lot of mental bandwidth. But it is the one thing I know that gives my life meaning. Now it can be drudgery wrapped in tedium encased in monotony, but the moments when it’s successful, like someone getting a home repair they couldn’t afford, it is everything.

I’ve struggled to prioritize time for things I enjoy, though, and I must do a better job of it. I realize that writing is how I process things, and I have to do more of it for that reason alone. For nearly three years, I have helped lead a disaster recovery in a tiny town in Alabama, and it has absorbed almost every moment of my time. My meaningful pursuit has now become a near Sisyphean task, with one step forward and two steps back on some days. But, as Camus wrote, we have to imagine Sisyphus happy- in the drudgery, the tedium, and the monotony. Interspersed with that have been moments of success and actual progress that genuinely changed things for the better in the little town. Sometimes, as we pushed the rock forward, we crushed some problems even if it seemed we had to start over on others every single day.

As I get older and my thoughts go to what could be, it takes away from the work that I know makes sense. My thoughts wander to the horizon where potential happiness lies. It blinds me to the things that keep me content where I am. I have to balance my dreaming with where I am lest I lose touch with the one thing I know that keeps me on this side of the sod. I have written openly and honestly about my struggles with depression, and I cautiously move through each day in ways that keep me steady. I protect my contentment.

To remind me of this, I actually ordered a handmade sign for my office that reads Camus’ recommendation on Sisyphus and happiness. I’m not saying I don’t dream anymore. It just serves, above all, as a reminder to find meaning and happiness in the absurdity that surrounds me.

Where I am now is so much different from where I could be, and I don’t mean I could be a better place. It’s likely far worse with the decisions I made growing up. When I was younger, though, I used to think I wanted to be a famous writer and that, if that never happened, I would be a failure in life. The thought of doing a “normal” job sounded horrendous. But I have managed to build a life that has provided meaning by living it the way I need to, and I am grateful for it. I am protective of it. When I learned to be content with the work, everything else became a bonus. When I realized just how short our lives are and that we won’t see nearly everything we hoped to, I made peace with it. When I figured out my own limitations, I learned to move within them.

And when my thoughts wander to what lies on the horizon, I remind myself I am already there, and that little to nothing could make my current existence much better. I can, however, make the existence of others around me somewhat better, and that is enough. I have somehow figured out how to push myself and innovate while still maintaining some semblance of stability for the people around me who need it.

I have been able to live life on my own terms, and some things I have wanted to work out did. Others did not. Whatever may come now is a bonus in my life, and maybe one day I will get to travel and write. Maybe not. But I have, at nearly 50 years of age, learned to find peace with that in the absurdity that surrounds me, and that is enough.

I can imagine Sisyphus happy. My only wish is that others can as well.

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