Sermon V: The Walk Back Down

Let's be honest about your job. Whatever it is — spreadsheets, surgeries, code, carpentry, teaching, sales — most of what you do today will be forgotten by Friday. The email you spent an hour on will be skimmed in twelve seconds. The meeting that consumed your morning will be remembered by no one. The report will go into a folder that will go into an archive that will go into the digital void.

This is not a tragedy. This is a liberation.

We forget this about the myth. Pushing the rock wasn't Sisyphus' passion project. It wasn't his calling. It was his punishment. The gods didn't give him meaningful work — they gave him the most meaningless work imaginable. And Camus' entire argument rests on the claim that Sisyphus could find happiness within it anyway.

If Sisyphus can find happiness in eternally pointless boulder-pushing, you can find something — not everything, but something — in the work you do. Not because the work is cosmically important. But because you're the one doing it, and your attention and craft are yours to give, and giving them fully is a form of revolt.

Marcus Aurelius governed the Roman Empire during plague, war, and constant betrayal. He didn't do it because he believed Rome would last forever — he was too smart for that. He did it because the doing was the point. "Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise or moral actions," he wrote. "But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human — however imperfectly — and fully embrace the pursuit you've embarked on."

Your work doesn't need to be your purpose. It just needs to be done well enough that you're not ashamed of it, and with enough presence that you're actually there while you're doing it. That's the whole ambition.

This week, pick one task you do every day that feels meaningless. The commute. The emails. The dishes. The routine report. And instead of resenting it, do it with full attention for one day. Not because it matters. Because your attention is the only thing you truly own, and where you place it is how you build a life.

Camus was a journalist. He wrote articles that were fishwrap by evening. He wrote them beautifully anyway.

The work doesn't matter. The way you do it does. That distinction is the whole of Stoic and Absurdist ethics in a single breath.