The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
~Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Twelve years ago, in December 2006, I accepted a position as a member of the first team of in-house executive coaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Our first year was both exhilarating and insanely hectic, and one consequence was that I stopped exercising completely. As I later described this period,
It was the usual thing: throw myself into a demanding job, defer my personal needs, tell myself "I'll exercise tomorrow," all while assuming that I could get active again any time I wanted to. And then in the Spring of 2008 I finally did get active again--and in less than a month I hurt myself, wrenching my knee so badly that it took seven weeks of rest to recover. I dimly recalled turning 40 the previous year and wondered if that might have something to do with it. Ultimately I realized that I needed to get active and stay active--I was too old to do "the usual thing" and needed to make a sustainable change in my approach to exercise.
So 2008 was a year of reckoning for me, and I had to accept and come to terms with a set of unfamiliar limitations. I could no longer take my physical capabilities for granted. But I was able to change my approach to exercise, and making a sustained commitment to stay active served me well throughout my 40s.
Yet in retrospect I see that I merely exchanged one set of illusions for another. While I learned not to take my body for granted, I labored (literally) under the mistaken impression that my efforts would forestall the aging process, if not indefinitely than at least long enough to allow me to maintain a sense of control over its advance.
And as the futility of this project slowly became apparent over the past decade, my determined commitment and my tolerance for discomfort (and my fear of mortality--see below) intertwined to create a perfect storm. Twice in the last three years I've enjoyed what felt like a period of peak physical health, only to experience a traumatic and painful injury that required months of arduous recovery.
So 2018 has been yet another year of reckoning, and I've had to recognize and accept yet another set of unfamiliar (and much less palatable) limitations. Most significantly, I've realized that my commitment to staying physically active has a shadow side, having become--at least in part--a "heroic project," a concept derived from the work of the late anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker.
As described by Sam Keen in his introduction to Becker's The Denial of Death, Becker believed that "the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death," and over the course of our lives we engage in any number of activities with the (typically unconscious) goal of achieving a symbolic victory over mortality, which offers us at least a provisional respite from this terror. These energies can be directed toward many different ends--raising a family, building a business, pursuing fame or status or wealth--but for many of us today this process also involves an almost fanatical dedication to physical health and well-being.
This was certainly the case for me during much of the past few years. At age 47 I decided to intensify my weight-lifting regimen, and a few months later I was setting all-time personal records for the bench-press and the squat--and then I blew out my elbow and could barely lift a coffee cup. I healed, eventually, and adopted a new approach, committing to a demanding routine of running and strength-training classes, and a few months later I weighed less then I did in high school as a competitive runner--and then I hurt my foot so badly I could barely walk. But while I may be a slow learner, life's lessons eventually sink in, and I've come to see this frantic effort for what it truly is: my very own heroic project, born of middle-age and the encroaching shadow of senescence, an understandable and yet misguided attempt to transcend mortality.
I'm embarrassed to admit that at first I found this demoralizing. I've been blessed with such good health until now that I felt inadequately prepared to cope with the inevitability of my physical decline. But while I may have lived a privileged existence in this regard, I haven't been entirely sheltered from reality. I've spent a great deal of time over the last decade reflecting on mortality, and those hours were spent profitably.
Rather than triggering morbid or unpleasant thoughts, fully acknowledging the finite nature of this existence only makes me more appreciative of everything that it has to offer. And over the last few months I've come to adopt this perspective not merely in an abstract, metaphorical sense, but in a deeply embodied and literal way, and Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus has been an important text in that process:
Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.
It is during the return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me... That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness...
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would be his torture, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?... Sisyphus...knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock...
One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
I haven't given up on a return to a more active life, and I do hope my healing process continues. But I'm pursuing this effort with a more realistic view of what's possible and a feeling of gratitude for what I can do, rather than a feeling of resentment for what I can't. I've grieved what I've lost, just as I'll grieve the losses to come. But the inevitability of loss, of the boulder slipping from my grasp, won't stop me from turning and descending again. And again. And again.
For Further Reading
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Albert Camus)
The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
Marcus Aurelius, 3,000 Years, and the Present Moment
Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)
Photo by Ann Wuyts.
