{"id":3305,"date":"2024-08-31T12:57:36","date_gmt":"2024-08-31T03:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shepherblog.com\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2024-08-31T12:59:55","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T03:59:55","slug":"the-21st-century-sisyphus-finding-meaning-in-the-mundane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/the-21st-century-sisyphus-finding-meaning-in-the-mundane\/","title":{"rendered":"The 21st Century Sisyphus: Finding Meaning in the Mundane"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is my first post that translating article from Chinese into English version.<\/p>

If you would like to read the original post, check\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Story of a 21st Century Sisyphus<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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The alarm clock rings every morning. Sisyphus opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling, and takes a deep breath. He knows it’s going to be another ordinary day.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Grooming, breakfast, squeezing into the subway.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

At the office, mountains of documents await him. He starts working, mechanically completing one file after another.<\/p>

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Lunchtime arrives, he walks to the convenience store near the company.\u00a0<\/p>

Buys a sandwich, sits on a park bench, watching the passing crowd. He wonders:<\/p>

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“Are they pushing their own boulders too?”<\/i><\/p>

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After lunch break, Sisyphus returns to the office, continuing unfinished work.<\/p>

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The pile of documents is finally cleared, but he knows tomorrow will bring new mountains of tasks.<\/span><\/p>

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Work ends, he squeezes into the subway again to return home.<\/p>

Dinner, shower, mindlessly scrolling through his phone.<\/p>

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Lying in bed, Sisyphus thinks about tomorrow, another similar day.<\/p>

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But strangely, he doesn’t feel despair. Instead, he finds meaning in this repetition.<\/p>

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Because he knows these ordinary days constitute the entirety of life. He chooses to accept, to find joy in the repetition.<\/p>

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Sisyphus smiles, closing his eyes.<\/p>

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Tomorrow, he will wake up again, start again. This is his rebellion, this is his victory.<\/p>

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Finding one’s own meaning in an absurd life.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The first time I read Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus<\/i>,” I was utterly shocked.<\/p>

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As a reader, I watched Sisyphus from a third-person perspective, constantly pushing his boulder.<\/p>

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Just as he reached the summit, the boulder rolled back down, and Sisyphus started over.<\/p>

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From an outsider’s view, Sisyphus’ actions seem meaningless, utterly absurd.<\/p>

But upon closer reflection, isn’t our daily life just the same?<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Wake up in the morning, complete today’s tasks, sleep; wake up the next day, complete new tasks, sleep.<\/p>

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Looking at the bigger picture, a human life is no different, everything returns to the starting point at the moment of death.<\/p>

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\u275d\u00a0 The meaning of life is its meaninglessness.<\/i> \u275e<\/p>

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This is nihilism, this is the absurdity of human existence.<\/p>

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But Camus tells us at the end of the story:<\/p>

\u275d\u00a0<\/span>One must imagine Sisyphus happy.<\/i> \u275e<\/p>

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We are the Sisyphus of the 21st century, pushing our own boulders every day.<\/p>

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Even though the boulder will eventually roll back down, we believe every moment of pushing is meaningful.<\/p>

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At the end of “The Courage to be Disliked<\/i>,” the philosopher says:<\/p>

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\u275d\u00a0<\/span>Life, so to speak, is a series of moments, like dancing in circles, one after another.<\/i>“

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\u275d\u00a0<\/span>And when you look back, you realize: ‘Ah! I’ve come this far.’<\/i>\u00a0\u275e<\/span><\/p>

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What life pursues is not the moment of reaching the mountaintop.<\/p>

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Perhaps many people compare life to a journey, and we’re always on the way.<\/p>

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But the philosopher tells us: it’s not like that, we who are acting now are the result.<\/p>

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The past doesn’t exist, the future is blank; only the present moment, the current me is real.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Story of a 21st Century Sisyphus<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-articles","category-daily-digest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3320,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/3320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openendedproject.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}