An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1942
The Myth of Sisyphus
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Camus's image. Sisyphus rolls his rock up the mountain, watches it roll back down, and starts again — forever. Camus says this is our condition: meaningless repetition. And yet, in the moment Sisyphus walks back down toward the rock, he is more than the rock. He sees, he chooses, he persists. The dignity, the happiness even, is in the lucid choice to continue.