Sisyphus - a reason to live.

In the depths of my memory I remember seeing a black and white spiral on a cover of a book, one that made it look cheap and poorly put together, but it intrigued me. As I read the first page, I read the next and the next  and not any more than a few hours later I was finished. "L'etranger" was completed. My memory really is cloudy as there is not a spiral in sight. 

Camus came to me at a time where I had a cloud over me, an existential crisis which the existentialists failed to solve. Absurdism seemed refreshing and explained the internal conflict I had experienced throughout my childhood. The desire for a cosmic meaning for being on earth, contrasted with the meaninglessness of existence. Absurdism not only acknowledges it but wants us to thrive off of it, which for me, is  an intellectually sexy version of nihilism. His philosophical interests in general are far more sexy than investigations into semantics, logic and other branches of philosophy because it is applicable; existential dread is among us all. It's something we have all thought about at some point in our lives and is a topic in which we can all discuss at length without the need of years of study. I quickly progressed to "The Plague" and then the holy grail of Camus: "The Myth of Sisyphus". 

For those of you who don't know - as I did not - Sisyphus was sentenced by the Gods to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, every time he reached the top, it would come tumbling down. Some say it could symbolise the search for meaning only to realise there is no such thing! The harshness of life. As the book progresses Camus produces a line which altered my perception: "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

The journey, not the destination is important. The suffering is important, you cannot have a strong character and an easy life. It is necessary to push oneself to heights they can't imagine. As Dostoyevesky said: "My greatest fear is not to be worthy of my sufferings". Worthy of suffering sounds ludicrous? like we owe suffering - the thing that hurts us - something. Well, what better way to meet suffering than to do so as we imagine Sisyphus - with a smile on his face. 

Ultimately, there is no cosmic meaning for my existence, or yours, but what other option do we have but to smile in the face of it all. Essentially, Camus can be summarised into one modern phrase: YOLO.