Call Me Sisyphus

The problem with modern living is that it is…well, it is just so…relentless.  Brush my teeth?  Didn’t I do that yesterday?  Twice?  I feel like a preschooler who just can’t believe I am being asked to do it again when there are so many more interesting things to do.  Preschoolers still believe there is more magic to life than the daily routines.  I am an adult now.   I know better.

When it comes to the repetitive tasks of adult life, my experience may be more like Sisyphus, the Greek prince who angered Zeus and was given the punishment of forever pushing a giant boulder up a mountain only to get it near the top and have it roll back down.  Sisyphus was condemned to spend eternity in the underworld perpetually starting over.  Apparently, the ancient Greeks who inspired modern mathematics, medicine and democracy also pioneered our contemporary version of hell where gravity is the devil.

Sisyphus’s story is more complicated than mine, and I’m no prince, but I can’t help thinking of him as I wash a mountain of dishes left over from a gathering the night before.  By the time I finish the load, it is time for breakfast, so I eat, and wash up more dishes.  Then I go to the refrigerator to fix a cold drink, and, of course, the ice I remove from the tray is the last of it.  I have to rinse the ice cube tray and refill it.  Next, I reach for the pitcher in the refrigerator.  You guessed it!  I fill my glass by emptying the pitcher which then needs to be washed up…and so it goes.  Followed by laundry…

It appears that somewhere along the way I may have angered the gods, and from watching the news, this could be the underworld.  Maybe the gods are ensuring that someone like me never leaves home.

This leads me to consider that cave people didn’t have it so bad—naked meant no laundry, and eating on the run meant no dishes.  Perhaps they were the more evolved ones and the lesson from Sisyphus is that daily life has been downhill ever since.

As adventurers race to settle outer space, I have to wonder:  what cosmic Sisyphean tasks await us there in a future of zero gravity? Will weightlessness be the new devil as I try to keep all of my balls in the air ceaselessly wondering:  which way is up?