on Hope

SISYPHUS, 2024

The Unbearable Lightness of Hope

The year is 2024, Feliz Navidad, everybody. I have, yet again, begun the year in the same place I begin every year - in the hills, in the cold, with the biting air and the (now) snowless Himalayas. The fog on the way down the mountains is thick, dense and utterly impossible to navigate through, it is 8 o’clock - I have had one singular cup of coffee. We stop at a Starbucks thirty kilometers into the plains. The fog is thick, still, unbearably so. The smell of too-sweet-hot-chocolate and day-old-carrot cake sits in the cold air - we are in a hurry; we must get back before the Sun sets. I get in the car - shivering, and rightfully so - it is, of course, winter in North India.The day goes on, the Sun sets - I think about my grades and my friends - it is all that matters to me. I listen to music. The day is almost over.It is 7:30 PM, we are not home yet, the Sun had set long before we entered Delhi - and yet, now that we’re in the city, my city, the mundaneness of the day has quite faded.It isn’t as if we had a big fancy dinner or that I saw the streets adorned with lights, no. I had the food my mother had made earlier. The streets were crowded, horns burst out of every cranny on the main road five minutes from my house - I wasn’t at my house yet, but I was home.I come from privilege. I have loving parents and a good home and an excellent brother, no, I am not unmindful of my luck. I have everything at the palm of my hand, the world is my oyster but I’ve never been to the beach.When I was younger, I remember singing being everything to me. It was everything to me. I thought that there was nothing I was good for, nothing so spectacularly suited for me if not singing. I am glad to say, I was wrong. Singing was everything to me. It was the first thing I said when I introduced myself, and the last thing I did each night before going to bed. I once had a teacher who told me to never stop singing, I stopped singing that year.Eventually, as all things do, singing became old and tired and morphed into writing. I was nothing - I am nothing if not my words. I know the drill by now, though - I love it, I am incomplete without it, and if there is hope - I leave - my world, as we know it, crumbles.And yet.I try again.Each year, I try again - something new, something different, often someone new - anything that could stick, and nothing ever does.It is 2024, the days are mundane and burning. The nights are cold and maddening - Welcome.Sisyphus is the subject of a Greek myth. As the story goes, Sisyphus was your resident cruel and tyrannical king and let’s say - crafty. He killed his visitors and married his niece. Long story short - he cheated death twice. Once by trapping Thanatos, the God of Death, in his own chains and another time, by asking his wife to not bury him so he could go back to the land of the living and “perform the correct rites.” (As if!)The Gods, obviously, were enraged by these acts of betrayal and when finally, finally, he came to Hades, he was punished for an eternity. The act was simple, - to roll a boulder up a hill but every time it reached the top, the boulder would simply roll back down.Camus explored Sisyphus’ punishment and the human experience in extensive detail in his “The Myth of Sisyphus”, you might’ve heard of it - I won’t bore you by reiterating his words.Except.“Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.”
(Camus, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’)Sisyphus’ punishment is scarily similar to what we, as people who function in societies, go through. More than that, it is what we go through willingly.Every day is mundane. It is an amalgamation of the various things I have to do either for other people, or myself. A day is simply a collection of chores that I must do, not to live, but to just survive.Bear with me now, you might’ve heard, Oscar Wilde once said;“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
(Oscar Wilde, 'The Soul of The Man Under Socialism')In a non-hyper-pretentious-I-have-just-read-The-Picture-of-Dorian-Gray kind of way, he’s right, isn’t he?Think of Sisyphus - breaking his back for all eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down. Sisyphus marches down the hill, he does it all again. But while Sisyphus has no choice - we do it of our own accord.We wake up, eat, work, sleep, wake, eat, work, sleep, wake: you get it. And yet, like Sisyphus, at the end of each day we tell ourselves that we made it through, and each morning, we begin anew - choosing to ignore the cycle that we are stuck in.I repeat:Every day is mundane. It is an amalgamation of the various things I have to do either for other people, or myself. A day is simply a collection of chores that I must do, not to live, but to just survive.I am fifteen years old. I have no knowledge of the world or of what it holds in store for me, despite how much I can write up about how it works.Every day, I wake up and I am so grateful.I am so grateful for the life I have been given.I am so grateful that I get to begin again every morning, regardless of what had happened the night before.Even more than that, I am so grateful for the chances everyone around me has been given. Everybody has a chance to begin again.Sisyphus marches down his hill, and he pushes the boulder every morning. I wake up and I choose to want to survive.Each night at the top of his hill, Sisyphus feels a lightness in his being that pushes him to march right down. Each night, I feel an unbearable lightness in my being that pushes me to start afresh.Each night, I am hopeful.The Sun, regardless of how long it is hidden for, always shines. It matters not if it is raining or if it’s nighttime. Somewhere in the world, the Sun is shining. Somewhere in the world, Sisyphus has found that familiar lightness in his being.That is the nature of daylight.It is 2024, Feliz Navidad, everybody. I start my year atop a hill and I come right back down during the year. I float through the trees as the Sun shines, hidden by the dense fog - and yet right at noon, regardless of how much fog there is, I feel its warmth on my skin. I start the year with a cup of coffee that was made for me at six in the morning. I start the year sipping on liquid love. I stop at the Starbucks that is thirty kilometers into the plains, I smile at the people who are still here, in aprons and hairnets, on the first day of the year. The cold air smells of invigorating coffee and last night’s celebration. We are in a hurry, I am no longer shivering.The day is almost over. It is 7:30 PM - the Sun still shines somewhere. Sisyphus has almost reached the top - he is hopeful.It is 2024, I stand steadfast through every day and every night. The Sun still shines somewhere.That is the nature of daylight.