I have a habit of going down Youtube and podcast rabbit holes. I tend to find interesting topics or bands that aren’t fully in the public domain. I consider it a gift. I went down a rabbit hole that I was wondering if anyone had explored or would be able to assist me with. The absurd topic at hand, Albert Camus.
It all starts with a movie, a famous movie to be precise. It was a story of growing pains and the follies of youth. Weirdly enough it was the movie that saw a young star get his big break with a single word, repeated three times “Alright, alright, alright!” I am, of course, referring to Dazed & Confused and the star, Matthew Mcconaughey. I am a big fan of the movie, it is the perfect combination of action and no action at all.
A few years ago I read about Richard Linklater’s spiritual sequel to D&C and knew I needed to watch it. The movie is Everybody Wants Some and many critics rate it to be a criminally underrated improvement on the coming of age Dazed & Confused. It follows a group of baseball players on the weekend before they start the college semester in America. It is jam packed with anecdotes and, although it speeds through the weekend, it feels like nothing really happens at all. I consider it a masterpiece and highly recommend it. Without giving too much away, one of the closing scenes discusses the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was punished by the Gods and tasked with a boulder up a hill for all of time. The main character of the film, Jake, implies that perhaps the Gods gave Sisyphus a purpose in the punishment. That’s where my rabbit hold starts.
I wanted to find something to unpack this concept and found a French philosopher by the name of Albert Camus. Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. He wrote an essay called the Myth of Sisyphus, where he introduces the idea of the absurd and philosophies on how to deal with an absurd world. He argues that Sisyphus finds happiness in completing the task and does not dwell in the absurdity of the repetition of starting from scratch when the boulder inevitably rolls down the hill again. Camus concludes the essay with “all is well,” and that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
This has been an interesting period for me mentally. It is no secret that I have found myself injured and lacking in the usual therapeutic runs and hockey games that I have come to lean on. I am also questioning my greater purpose, based on a few factors. The rabbit hole that is Albert Camus has led me to think of the absurdity of going to work every day and coming home tired and getting enough sleep to do it all again. It’s an incredibly tough concept to grasp from the outside looking in. It also feels like the world has lost its mind a bit. Perhaps we should celebrate the small wins of pushing that boulder up the hill as we run away from the boulder of burnout, much like Indiana Jones. Makes one think.
Watch this space, I think we have no clue how deep the rabbit hole goes.