the pleasure-pain of becoming
turns out i am a masochist, at least for continuous self improvement
i first encountered the myth of sisyphus when we tackled albert camus in my college french literature class. as a west african, i have strong feelings towards the french and camus happens to be one of my favorite authors. his passing comment that the main character of his seminal work, l'étranger, was brought to task because he “refused to play the [societal] game” was amusing to me because you’d think capital crime warrants capital punishment, but this is french postmodernist thinking after all. alas.
in le mythe de sisyphe, camus opens his pandora’s box and unleashes his philosophy of the absurd onto the world. he sermonize that the absurd lies in the heartbreaking moment when one understands that the world is not rational. he wrote:
“At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
the unreasonable silence of the world can be seen by many things in our times. for my purposes here, i’ll focus on the human need for reason. as a woman, i take great pride in my pursuit of personal perfection. this is not healthy by any means, but perfecting myself remains the only aspect of this world i can control. if i surrender anything as a woman, it’s the fact that there are truly things outside of my control but my body, my mind, and my mindset do not have to be one of those things. i remain in charge, lord willing.
as we know, due to his bad behavior (his charges were trickery and cheating death, twice), sisyphus was ordered by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill only for the boulder to tumble back down just before he could get it over the hill’s crest. he was cursed because he had to roll the boulder back up the hill every time it came down, and it always came down.
in my prior writing, i noted that we live in the sisyphusification of our 21st century, social media-fueled self improvement culture. i have critques of this culture, but ultimately, i am in alignment with it. in fact, i am a product of this culture as continuous self improvement remains my number one hobby. this does sound rather sad, if not a bit dorky, at first read but ride with me.
the aim is not perfection, but falling in love with the pleasure-pain of becoming. (yes, i know what i wrote earlier but i am a chitra sun, jystetha moon, and sravana ascendent; perfectionism is a birthright for a woman like me.) the pleasure comes when you stretch the rubber band of your limits, as you’ve imposed them upon your identity and/or capabilities; but the pain quickly follows when that same rubber band returns to kiss your skin with that familiar bitter bite of self-doubt, or worse, self-loathing.
"the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. one must imagine sisyphus happy."
the game of life, is one played in cycles. just like sisyphus, the gods have left us to gather our dreams, desires, and desperations into a boulder forged by our habits up the hill of circumstance only to watch it roll back down, propelled by the winds of self sabotage.
to soothe any anxiety you may have on becoming, image you are in a desert, delirious from the heat but then night comes to your rescue with a cool breeze. laying down, you watch the stars twinkle and remember that you, too, are a small fraction of the universe.
however much fraction of the universe you aim to gain in your lifetime, embrace the pleasure-pain of becoming. if nothing else, give the gods a good show.
sweet dreams,
a diouana woman