The work to imagine a better way is difficult work, and as they say, it is never-ending.
A continuous, daily grind of putting out fires, managing the needs of others, navigating stormy waters and hoping for the time when the seas are calm to enjoy the fruits of our labour.
That is the domain of purpose-driven work — the work that never truly ends — where we hope for a time where we might put our tools down, look up to a clear blue sky and for once — just once — feel like we are living and not existing to serve the expectations of a world that rarely if ever, works for us.
In ancient Greek mythology King Sisyphus, tired of seeing people around him suffer decided to do the unthinkable and in turn, angered the gods so much, that he was sent to serve an eternal penance.
Sisyphus decided to place Death himself — yes Death — in chains and in turn allow every human to live forever. And for this he paid a heavy price.
The gods were so shocked and affronted by this change in the balance of immortality in the universe — who in their right mind would allow anyone to live forever — they decided to condemn Sisyphus to pushing an enormous boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll down to the base of the mountain once it reached the summit. The poor King would have to walk to the base of the mountain, and repeat the task of pushing it back up, only for it to roll back down again.
This he would repeat for eternity. A thankless, never-ending, eternally gruelling task.
However, one that provides for us a simple allegory of our pursuits of meaningful work — a story told in the novella The Myth of Sisyphus by the philosopher Albert Camus.
Imagine how King Sisyphus felt each time he reached the summit, watching the boulder roll back down the mountain, knowing he would need to follow it to the bottom, and return to his never-ending endeavour of pushing it back up again.
Albert Camus sums this moment up by comparing the never-ending toil with our lives at work:
And it is this moment of 'when they become conscious' — a moment of pause and reflection — that interests me most.
When we become conscious of our toil, of the hard work that we put in each day, in a moment where we ask ourselves why we do what we do, and for whom. We have the opportunity to decide what happens next — if we are to walk back to the grind, to repeat a thankless, mindless task, or decide that we have it within our power to change what we do next. And it is in this moment when we realise that this thing we do — this search for meaningful work, will likely continue for eternity if we do nothing.
So we must look back down the mountain at the end of each day, otherwise what are we if we don't? We must look back down and use this moment to become conscious of our endeavour, to decide and become aware that we have agency and choice to not repeat the mistakes we made yesterday but rather use them to fuel what we do next.
In this moment of consciousness, we must decide if we will walk back and push it all back up to the summit again tomorrow, or if we will take this gentle moment of reflection as our opportunity to do something different.
To make a choice that will see us work for something bigger than ourselves — to live beyond the very notion of what we thought was possible for ourselves.
And not to simply repeat a thankless task for eternity.
See you next week.
