Peaceful Absurd

Sisyphus, the absurd hero with his ravenous ardor for life and acceptance of his fate has often enamored my own nothingness. Aware of his providence and armed with his audacity he lived his absurdity with pride,if I must say. The gods had chastised him against his impish acts to roll a stone up to the top of mountain which inevitably will fall down again off its own weight. This was his eternal punishment which was aimed to rebuke the futility and nothingness of his existence.

He did deeds that no mortal would dare to execute, but would be surely tickled with the thrills of doing the barred. He chained death and fooled him out of its wits, while we are often jolted with the sudden stop at the end and easily relinquish to it’s preeminence over our being. He questioned the sanctity of his wife’s adoration while we are timorous to question anything, out of our own insecurities, and constantly live for maintaining the status quo.

Talking about absurdity what strikes me the most is the feeling of zilch that it comes with. Though it’s definitely futile and would often yield discontentment, but the experience of living the nothingness with absolute no hope often makes my mind wander. Today, I feel I’m doing a lot of work which keeps me busy throughout the day but the futility and uselessness of them pervades in the background. If we look carefully there is hopelessness in each hope, and we often are stuck in the scenario of hope against hope. If we realize the futility of our actions and accept them as a mere response to survival and a rationale to an eventful existence, I guess ground work for peace will be laid.

I don’t know for what reason I think a sentient absurd can be a tranquil person. Absurdity and peace can be made to sit in two ends of a continuum. Sisyphus was a tragic protagonist, since everyone saw the uselessness of his actions, his toil and labor to mount a heavy rock up only to see it come down and his continued tryst with it. I dart my imagination and wonder what the incorrigible Sisyphus on his way down the mountain following his rock would say to me? After giving it some thought, I can actually envisage the spectacle. Sweat adorning his forehead, slouched shoulders paining with all the physical labor along with frustration of seeing his efforts in vain. The moment he sees the inquisitive and vague mortal in me the weariness and discontentment evaporates in thin air and a profound glee appears on his face. “How the hell do you live with this monotony that clinches your existence?” I would ask to which I can hear an impish reply, “I live with the certainty, when I mount the rock up I know that it would come down….’’

I am forced to realize that Camus was right when he said that Sisyphus was tragic because he was conscious of his fate. All of us in our pursuits keep ourselves busy with variety of activities without realizing that the consequences are uncertain. We constantly live in hope and get crushed once it’s crushed. When I say that the feelings of absurdity, irrationality pervades our quest I wish to highlight how one moment life is a fact, an enthralling journey, and in the next it’s a cloak of nothingness or death.

The idea is not to cultivate an idea of living a life of hopelessness, but it is to accept the nothingness, the absurdity and the irrationality that is the essence of everything and stop professing that we are bound by rationality. The day I would welcome my fate, my absurdity, consequences will stop bothering me and I would be peaceful.

Camus said, ’’ One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, and I do.