All things being equal, I’d rather be doing this right about now:
Alas, my riding season is probably pretty much done. There are no more races and real life gets in the way. I’m actually struggling with how much I want to do on the bike or in the pool or running. You’re supposed to have an off season, they say. But I am not one for whom fitness is a linear thing.
Feels more Sisyphean than anything. Make a bit of progress, find a new best or improve on a new technique or hit a longer distance and then get bogged down by the other parts of life.
Except Sisyphus was doomed to his fate as a punishment. So probably most of us are using the expression wrong. On the other hand, Lucretius said the myth personified politicians who always looked for office but were also always defeated. The quest for power, he said, being an “empty thing.”
When I’m going up a hill — on my bike, not pushing boulders, which is not something I am never really tasked with doing, fortunately — I could also use some more power, my legs being empty things.
Kierkegaard and Camus and all sorts of writers and philosophers have expounded on the Sisyphus tale. But I want to know what first century B.C. writer Publilius Syrus, of Syria would have to say. You know Syrus, he’s the person credited with the old saw about a rolling stone gathering no moss.
People have apparently tried to tie the two together, but according to the text from a 1912 book I just found online, that’s just a clever reimagining. Which is an odd thing if you go back to the myth. Part of Sisyphus’ problem was that he thought he was more clever than Zeus. The story goes that the big Z, showing how clever he was, put the weeby jeeby on that stone and that’s why it kept rolling back down that hill.
So maybe you downplay the wit and whatnot around that particular deity. Gravity is tough enough all by itself. Which is pretty heavy for a Thursday, if you really think about it.
