Introduction.
I never want to “charge” or “challenge” you—I want to remind you. As Plato (in Phaedo) might tell us, learning is just the process of remembering things we did not realize we knew. There is no goal for these meditations beyond helping you recall the deep truths within your soul.
The First Meditation: What If Sisyphus Stopped?
For the social justice warrior, emotional burden carrier, and problem-conqueror of the world rest seems like a foggy dream. Our work is an eternal up-hill trudge, loaded down with heavy memories and pain. Like in the myth of Sisyphus, the man cursed by the gods to roll a giant rock up a mountain for eternity, we work. Rolling, rolling, rolling up only to reach the top—watch the boulder roll back down—and prepare for the hike back to the bottom, only to begin again.
In our capitalist-born brains, focused on ascension, gain, and control (whether we realize it or not) we have a tendency to reject rest because it might slow us down, set us back, cause us to get distracted. But perhaps distraction is the best part of life; set-backs come and it is better to learn how to confront than to avoid; and slowing down, sweet slowing down, is perhaps the reset button our souls need to push on for another day.
Your work never ends, but you will one day. So take that as a reminder not to let each finite day slip away without stealing a moment to pause to look around. Suffering continues and work will be there in the morning but you, in this common moment, need reprieve—allow it to embrace you. The stone has rolled back down the mountain, and you must chase it. What is stopping you from tightening your shoes and enjoying the hike back to the bottom?
Resources for continued thinking:
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, by Albert Camus.
The Brazen Youth. The Ever Dying Bristlecone Man, The Brazen Youth 2016.
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