While reading the last few chapters of the Myth of Sisyphus I’ve been wondering about what are some practical takeaways that I can use to apply to my own life. Here they are in enumerated bullet points:
- Making art can be a means in living with the absurd. The artist, as Camus describes them, is a person who can live with the absurd because they try to mime reality. As Camus puts it “it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing (p. 94).” For me, the main takeaway is to attempt to be more mindful and present in the moment. Every little thing that happens in the spur of the moment should be described and experienced fully by me.
- I need to kill God and become God himself. Camus uses Kirilov as a way to explain why someone may need to kill God. God in how Camus describes it is a figure that may dictate how one lives their life. Indeed he says “To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.” I think this goes back to the idea of not hope, as hoping is looking to the future, to something that could be when in reality I should be present. Antagonizing about what the future holds brings either philosophical suicide or life back into the mechanical life.
- But eluding hope always cannot happen as Camus says. In response, he emphasizes that “it shows the necessity of unfailing alertness (p. 113)” I think diligence of being alert is a reasonable conclusion made by Camus but I wonder if it’s actually possible as it can be demanding. Camus says that the creator themself can only maintain consciousness if they exercise ascesis and thus to me only seems obtainable by those with great discipline. And for the creator, we demand revolt, freedom, and diversity.
- Finally, we need to be aware of our struggles, not eluding ourselves in false hope. We can then be like Sisyphus, aware of our damned fate and find ephemeral happiness.
Now the real question is, do I accept this?
Every week I talk to one of my math professors and we actually have been talking about existentialism a bit. It’s nice to hear his input as he’s in a different place in life from me and can provide a different perspective. While talking to him about these points, I continually struggle with the idea of becoming God myself and not restricting myself to some predestined path I need to follow. I think it’s a nice idea but it’s a hard one. I’ve been struggling with what I should do after graduating and while I have partially decided to apply to graduate schools, I feel like it is someone’s path being imposed on me. I think being one’s God and being able to choose what I want to do is a nice thought but Camus doesn’t give any guidelines. All the characters that Camus has given all have found their passion but it feels like I am very far from finding mine.
Really, the only applicable thing I can think of is the last point. I know my fate and I shouldn’t allude to it by thinking of some fantasy. If I’m real to myself then through struggles I can find happiness. This argument makes the most sense because of a scene I think about in the Good Place. Spoiler alerts if you haven’t watched it yet. But in the final season all the main characters get the Good Place and it’s not the place they think it is. No one there is happy–for they are all in a constant state of bliss. It turns into a philosophical question of, if we are to create a heaven ourselves, what would it look like? Similarly here, we can only find happiness if there is some juxtaposition. Through the struggles that we face we are able to appreciate the brief moments of happiness and we focus on it because we are not disillusioned that there is something else–this is the only thing that we can experience now.
