Sisyphus was a man who was given a punishment that never ended. Every day, he pushed a heavy stone up a mountain. And every time he neared the top, the stone slipped away and rolled back to the bottom. His job was to start over, again and again, forever. The ones who punished him believed — maybe with some truth — that nothing hurts more than working without hope, struggling without a goal you can ever reach. Some say Sisyphus was brilliant, the smartest of men. Others say he was a thief, always scheming. Maybe he was both. People argue over why he ended up with such a terrible fate. One story says he made a deal that angered the gods. When a powerful man’s daughter went missing, Sisyphus knew where she was. But instead of giving up the answer freely, he bargained: he’d share the secret only if the man would bring water to his dry and thirsty city. Sisyphus chose to help the living over pleasing the powerful — and for that, they say, he was punished. Another story says he did something even bolder: he trapped Death itself. For a time, no one died. The world fell out of balance. Even the rulers of the underworld couldn’t stand the stillness. They sent someone to break Death free and bring back the natural order. But maybe the most revealing story is this: when Sisyphus knew he was near death, he told his wife to throw his body in the town square when he died, unburied and exposed. She did. Once in the world of the dead, Sisyphus complained — how could she love him so little? The rulers of the dead, moved by his anger, let him return to the living to scold her. But when he felt the sun on his skin again, when he tasted fresh water and felt the earth under his feet, when he saw the sea shine, he refused to go back. No warnings, no threats could change his mind. He stayed, alive and joyful, until they finally sent someone to seize him and drag him away. And when they brought him back, his stone was there, waiting. You’ve probably already sensed it: Sisyphus is a symbol of what it means to live with no easy answers. He’s the hero of struggle without end. Not just because of his punishment, but because of what drove him — his defiance, his refusal to surrender, his deep, stubborn love for life. That’s what earned him his punishment: to pour all his strength into a task that never leads anywhere. That’s the price for daring to care so fiercely about the world. The old stories don’t tell us what Sisyphus thought or felt once he was trapped in the land of the dead. Myths live because we fill them with meaning, with pieces of ourselves. And what we’re shown in this myth is the body: the man, the muscle, the endless pushing. We see a body bent forward, a face tight with effort, a cheek pressed hard against rough stone, a shoulder straining against the weight, a foot planted firm to hold the burden, two hands, dusty and scraped, braced wide for yet another try. It’s not about the gods. It’s not even about the punishment. It’s about the raw, human act of trying — again and again — even when you know you’ll never be done. When Sisyphus finishes his long, grueling push — marked only by an empty sky and a time that never changes — the task is done, but only for a moment. He watches the stone tumble back down the mountain, crashing to the bottom, and knows he must follow it, to begin again. And so, step by step, he makes his way down. It’s in that return, in that space to breathe, that Sisyphus pulls my attention. His face, worn thin by effort, almost seems to turn to stone itself. I see this man walking down the slope with a heavy, steady step, returning to a burden that will never end. That moment — the pause before it all begins again — that’s the moment of reflection. In those small breaks, as he walks back toward the bottom, he becomes something greater than his punishment. He becomes stronger than the weight waiting for him. If this story carries tragedy, it’s not because of the punishment alone — it’s because Sisyphus knows. If he were fooled by hope, if he believed victory was just around the corner, it wouldn’t cut so deep. But he knows exactly what awaits, and he goes anyway. The same is true for the workers of today — people who do the same exhausting tasks day after day. Their lives only become tragic when they realize the weight of it all. Sisyphus, the one who labors even among the gods, helpless but unbroken, understands the full size of his misery. And it’s in that understanding, on his way back down the slope, that his strength shows. That clear-eyed recognition — the ability to look at his fate and still walk forward — that’s his triumph. Because there’s no fate that can’t be faced down with defiance. Sometimes Sisyphus walks down in sorrow. But sometimes — and this matters — he walks down in joy. And that word isn’t too big for this moment. I picture Sisyphus turning back to his stone, and yes, the sorrow often comes first. When memories of beauty pull too hard at the heart, when the old hunger for happiness stirs up sharp longing, that’s when the sadness rises. That’s when the stone seems to win. That sadness is the stone itself — the weight that feels too heavy to carry. We all have those nights, when the truth we carry feels too much to bear. But here’s the thing: once you face the truth, once you really look at it and stop running, it starts to lose its power over you. That’s when the shift begins. Think of someone like Oedipus — at first, he moves blindly, caught in a fate he can’t see. But the moment he understands, the real tragedy begins. And yet, it’s also in that moment — broken, cast out, blind — that he touches something human and tender: the hand of a girl who guides him. And then comes the turning point, when he can say, “Through all this pain, my long years and the strength I’ve built inside have taught me: it’s okay.” This is the hard, old wisdom that still matters now. This is the secret of facing the absurd — the unfixable, the unchangeable — and standing anyway. It’s the same strength we still need today. When you really look at the absurd — at the messy, unfair, unpredictable nature of life — it’s hard not to want to write a guidebook for how to be happy anyway. You might ask, “What? We’re supposed to find joy on a path this narrow?” But this is the world we have. There’s no other. And happiness and struggle are born from the same place. They’re tied together — you can’t pull them apart. It’s not that facing life’s absurdity automatically creates happiness. Sometimes, it’s the other way around: sometimes happiness makes you aware of just how fragile, how absurd it all is. When Oedipus says, “I conclude that all is well,” that’s not a small statement. That’s the moment he reclaims something sacred. It echoes through the small, fierce world of human experience, reminding us that all is not lost. It pushes aside the image of a god who only craves endless suffering. It puts fate back into human hands, something we can face together, here, among each other. That’s where the quiet triumph of Sisyphus lives. His fate is his — fully his. His stone, his burden, his life — and he owns it. And the person who has stared into the absurd and survived, when they look at their own struggle, they let go of all false promises. In a world stripped bare of illusions, they begin to hear again the small, living voices around them — quiet calls, silent invitations, the presence of other people, the pulse of life itself. That’s the real reward. There’s no sunlight without shadow. You have to know the night to truly love the day. The person who faces the absurd says yes to life — fully, openly — even knowing their work will never be finished. If there’s such a thing as personal fate, it’s not some order handed down from above. And if it is, then it’s both necessary and, somehow, still unworthy of ruling us. Beyond that, the person who sees clearly knows: they are the master of their own days. There’s a quiet, powerful moment when someone looks back on their life — Sisyphus, catching his breath before returning to his stone. In that small pause, he sees the chain of everything he’s done, once scattered, now pulled together under the light of memory, soon to be closed by death. And still, knowing full well that everything human comes only from human hands, like a blind person longing for light even in endless night, he keeps going. The stone still rolls. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the hill. Again and again, we each return to our burdens. But Sisyphus teaches us the deepest kind of faithfulness — the kind that refuses to worship false powers and instead picks up the real, heavy stones of life. He too says, “All is well.” This world, with no master over it, no meaning handed down, is not empty to him. Each grain of rock, each stretch of the dark mountain, becomes its own world. The struggle toward the heights — that’s enough to fill a person’s heart. We have to imagine Sisyphus as happy.