Push That Boulder! 🧗‍♂️ Why Embracing the Absurd (à la Camus) is the Secret to a Happy Life

Ever feel like you’re pushing a giant boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down the moment you reach the top? This daily grind, this sense of repetitive, pointless struggle, is a feeling many of us know all too well. We search for grand purpose and cosmic significance, but often come up empty-handed. What if the secret to happiness wasn’t in finding a ultimate meaning, but in learning to love the struggle itself? The 20th-century philosopher Albert Camus thought so. He looked at the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, a man cursed to an eternity of futile labor, and saw not a tragic figure, but a hero. This article explores Camus’s radical idea of the absurd and reveals why embracing your own “boulder” might be the most liberating path to a truly happy life.

What is the absurd, anyway?

Before we can embrace it, we need to understand what Albert Camus meant by “the absurd.” It’s not about things being silly or bizarre. For Camus, the absurd is a specific philosophical concept: it’s the conflict, the clash, the divorce between two things:

• Our human desire for meaning, reason, and clarity.
• The universe’s cold, silent, and unreasonable nature.

We are meaning-seeking creatures thrown into a world that offers no inherent meaning. We scream questions about purpose and justice into the cosmos, and the cosmos offers only silence in return. This realization, this confrontation with the universe’s indifference, is the feeling of absurdity. It’s that stomach-dropping moment when you realize the world wasn’t built with your happiness or understanding in mind. It simply is. And according to Camus, acknowledging this painful gap, rather than trying to ignore it, is the first step toward authentic living.

Meet Sisyphus, the ultimate absurd hero

To illustrate his point, Camus turned to the Greek myth of Sisyphus. Condemned by the gods for his trickery, Sisyphus was given a terrible punishment: he must push a massive boulder up a steep hill for all eternity. Every time he neared the summit, the rock would roll back to the bottom, and he would have to start his labor all over again. It is the definition of a pointless, hopeless, and torturous task.

So why did Camus call him a hero? Because Sisyphus represents us all. His meaningless toil mirrors our own daily struggles in a world without a pre-ordained purpose. But the heroism isn’t in the pushing of the boulder; it’s in the moment Sisyphus walks back down the hill to retrieve it. In that moment, Camus argues, Sisyphus is fully conscious of his wretched condition. He sees the full extent of his fate. He isn’t operating under delusion or false hope. He knows the boulder will roll down again. And in this consciousness, he is superior to his rock.

Revolt, freedom, and passion

Faced with a meaningless existence, Camus says we have three options. The first two, he argues, are forms of escape. The first is literal suicide, which he rejects as simply giving in to the absurd. The second is what he calls “philosophical suicide”—taking a leap of faith into a religion or rigid ideology that provides ready-made answers. This, for Camus, is a betrayal of reason because it dodges the problem rather than confronting it.

This leaves the third, and only authentic, option: rebellion. To live in rebellion means to fully accept the absurd without resignation. You must keep the conflict alive by refusing both false hope and despair. This rebellion gives rise to two other crucial values:

• Freedom: Once you accept there is no ultimate plan or divine rulebook, you are truly free to define your own values and live by them. You are no longer bound by the search for some external “permission” to live.
• Passion: Realizing your time is finite and the universe is indifferent, the only logical response is to live as intensely and fully as possible. It is to love the life you have, not the one you wish you had.

Finding joy in the struggle

This brings us to the most powerful and transformative part of Camus’s philosophy. How can a man condemned to eternal, pointless labor be happy? The famous last line of Camus’s essay is, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Sisyphus’s happiness doesn’t come from a hope that the boulder will one day stay at the top. It comes from the act of rebellion itself. By consciously accepting his fate and choosing to push the boulder anyway, he robs the punishment of its power. He makes the rock his thing. His fate belongs to him. This defiant ownership of his struggle is his victory. His happiness is a quiet, profound joy found not in the outcome, but in the effort. It’s the happiness of knowing you are facing the worst the world can throw at you, and you are not breaking.

We all have our own boulders—the repetitive job, the chronic illness, the difficult relationships, the daily chores. We can see them as a curse, or we can, like Sisyphus, make them our own. We can find a defiant purpose in showing up every day, pushing with all our might, and finding our meaning not in a distant future, but in the strength and consciousness we bring to the present moment.

In the end, the philosophy of Albert Camus isn’t a message of despair, but one of profound empowerment. It begins by asking us to stare into the abyss of a meaningless universe, a terrifying prospect for many. But by walking us through the story of Sisyphus, Camus shows us that this recognition is not an end, but a beginning. By rejecting the easy escapes of suicide or blind faith, we are left with the most powerful choice: to rebel. This rebellion—living with freedom and passion in the face of absurdity—is where true happiness lies. It’s a happiness not given to us by gods or the cosmos, but one we forge ourselves. It’s the resilient joy found in acknowledging our struggle, owning our fate, and pushing that boulder with a smile.

Image by: Renzo Tirado
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