DE Weekly: Bukowski, Sisyphus, & the Human Condition
Below is an archived email originally sent on November 18, 2024.
Bukowski, Sisyphus, & the Human Condition
It’s difficult to wake up every day and be grateful for what you have. It’s difficult to remain in the present moment and remind yourself how good you have things. I’m guilty of this myself, usually when I’m in the middle of some necessary drudgery, like running certain errands or–God forbid–when I find myself somewhere as unholy as the DMV.
But such is the human condition. Not one of us–no, not a single one–can coast through life without ever having to face an unpleasant situation or do something we don’t want to do.
When I was younger, I was naïve enough to think there was a certain income threshold I could surpass and never have to do anything I don’t want to ever again.
Now that I’m older (and a bit wiser, though not by much), I’ve realized the true luxury is in how I respond to these situations when I’m in them. And I will be in them. That’s just life.
The work of Charles Bukowski, the twentieth century American poet and novelist, covers themes like this quite a bit. You’ve definitely seen Bukowski quotes on social media before.
There’s a quote from Bukowski’s Factotum that I think relates to this:
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Bukowski was a realist–he wrote about real life. Thus, his work is hugely existentialist-adjacent. It overlaps a lot with the philosophical concepts.
I think the quote above is relatable for a lot of us. Who hasn’t woken up on a Monday morning before and thought, “I just don’t know if I can do this today.”?
But here’s the second half of the human condition: we get up and we do it anyway.
Bukowski’s illustration of daily life is just the first half of the story. It’s Camus’s realization of the absurd; we are born into a world we didn’t design, yet we must live according to its design.
The way out, the greatest revolt, is to accept our fate and play the game. We can do this by being grateful for what we do have, and staying in the present moment. In doing so, we can make a better future for ourselves.
Working to break free of our chains is an infinitely better remedy to unfreedom than sitting in our chains and remarking over and over of how heavy they are.
I’ll cite the help of another twentieth century poet and screenwriter, this time from Jacques Prévert: “Plus tard, il sera trop tard. Notre vie, c’est maintenant.”
That means, “Later, it will be too late. Our life is now.”
We have no choice but to live in the moment. We have no choice but to sometimes sit in the midst of unpleasantness. We have no choice but to accept the constraints of a twenty-four hour day and put some things off into the future.
All we can do is embrace our present. This is the point of Camus’s conclusion in The Myth of Sisyphus. This is another one you’ve probably seen on social media.
Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to push a large, heavy boulder up a hill. As soon as he gets it to the top, the boulder rolls back down, and he must retrieve it to roll it back up again. For eternity.
Camus says of this plight that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Why, exactly?
Well, Sisyphus has no choice but to embrace his fate. He has one thing he can do, so he finds purpose in it. The journey of pushing the boulder is more important than the goal of the boulder being at the top.
He finds meaning in his fate. And in doing so, he defies the gods–he created meaning where there seemingly was none.
And so, we should find joy in the little things. We should find joy in the daily minutiae that sometimes feel so pointless. We should find joy in the tasks we don’t want to do, but have to do.
Without these things, our happiness would mean nothing. We might as well be grateful for it.
Homer summed it up better than I ever could, thousands of years ago in The Iliad: “Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
If you’ve read any of my newsletters, you know I like to pull quotes from all sorts of people and places. I’m working on compiling the best quotes and breaking them down on the Daily Existentialist website. If you’re interested, start here with Albert Camus. And let me know if there’s any quotes you’d like to see broken down.
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