Thursday 2 March 2017

Comrades , Camus and Sisyphus

Comrades, Camus & Sisyphus.


“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus



Yesterday on March 1, 2017, I started serious training for the Comrades Ultra Marathon.  As it was a Wednesday, I did a longish run which ended with me doing two hill reps.

As I stood at the bottom of a longish hill, I contemplated the climb ahead.  I realised that I was at the bottom of the hill in more ways than one.

Like most normal recreational runners, I cannot sustain peak training for more than a few months.  If I trained hard all year round, my body would break down.

I try and train as hard as possible from March to May.  At the end of May, I hope to be in peak shape for Comrades.

After Comrades, I come down the hill: mentally, physically and emotionally.  I can no longer sustain that rigorous training and so I lose a substantial part of my fitness in the months that follow.   I more or less return to naught.

I’ve now been running Comrades for 8 years and it is the same story every year.

As I begin training for a new Comrades I am appalled at the amount of hard work which awaits me from March to May and the tragedy is that I know that after working very hard through those months, I will not be able to bank that fitness.  In the months that follow Comrades, I know that I will lose much of it and will again find myself at the bottom of the hill when I start training for the following year.

I stood below the hill yesterday, contemplating the absurdity of my position.  I climb a mountain each year and then I have to climb it again in a year’s time.  There is no possibility of staying on top.    Become fit and then lose the fitness and again become fit and lose the fitness over again.  

To what end must I do this?  I know that at some point in the future, I will no longer be able to run Comrades and then at a point further in distance, like everyone else, I will die.  So is this worth doing?  Is their any meaning in this?

What is the point in this ritual, up and down the mountain?
Is it not an absurd thing to do?
Is this worth doing?  
This race is so hard that it takes all I have and more often than not, what I have is not enough.
Why then should I suffer ?
What is the meaning of struggling to go up that hill when I know that I will come back down?
Is there a meaning to life and its absurd daily bustle?

3 months of brutal training to gain fitness which will be substantially lost as soon as Comrades is done and I will have to start all over again next year!  What is the point in making it up the hill?

Standing at the bottom of that hill, yesterday,  I was reminded of Sisyphus, one of the greatest heroes of Greek mythology.

Sisyphus was condemned by Zius to roll a huge boulder up a hill for all eternity.  And the moment he managed to push it up to the top, it would roll back down.   Sisyphus was condemned to do this for all eternity.  Push the rock up the hill with all his might, only to have it roll down.

I wonder what Sisyphus would have felt when each time on reaching the top he realized that he had to walk down again and restart the whole process.  To know that he had accomplished nothing.  The futility of the labor must have eaten into his soul.

Albert Camus in his fabulous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus draws a picture of Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill..“One sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over, one sees the face screwed up, the cheek against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of the two earth-clotted hands.
At the very end of his long effort measured by sky-less space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved.
Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments towards the lower world whence he will have to push it up again towards the summit.”

A tragic & absurd fate like this would push one into contemplating if life is worth living.   But Sisyphus accepts his fate.  He does not search for meaning expect doing what is at hand.

And so for Camus, Sisyphus is an hero because in that moment when he turns around to return to the bottom of the hill, he is fully conscious of his wretched condition and in this clear awareness and acceptance of his fate, he becomes “superior to his fate”.  He embraces the absurd and in embracing it, he overcomes it.

“He is stronger than his rock”.  

He does not give into sorrow or religion.  

He does not look for a meaning to his life outside of his condition.  

He understands that there is freedom beyond what the Gods can grant.

He remains “awake”.  
He learns that there are no tomorrows and that he is free.
He concludes that all is well.

Camus concludes that “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I am no Sisyphus.  The Gods have no time to take a hand in my fate.
My fate is a personal matter, which I must sort out myself.

I know that I will lose my fitness again and again and someday I will not be able to push up the hill anymore. So be it.

But like Sisyphus, I know that pushing up the hill is neither sterile nor futile.   Climbing up the mountain is my thing.

The struggle towards the heights is enough to fill my heart.

I know I am happy.

Besides, every-time I stand at the bottom of the hill, I know that I will struggle up the hill again, in the company of heroes.

And at the top.. glory awaits.