Boulders
Once upon a time, there lived a king named Sisyphus, who deceived others for personal gain. One day, he exposed Zeus’s affair with Aegina and was punished to push a boulder up a mountain for all eternity.
My boulder came in the form of running.
Back in third grade, I attended a boarding school in China. After sitting through long hours of lecture, I found PE a welcoming relief. One day during an intense relay race, I was entrusted to be the anchor for my team. We were behind by a small margin, but I managed a comeback and secured our victory. After the race, the track coach recruited me on the spot. It was a huge honor because only a select few were on the team. Training was harsh: ten laps around the track, push-ups, sit-ups, squats,
I had completed all my races the day before and was a spectator when the coach asked me to be a substitute in the relay. As the youngest runner, I was not as fast as the older girls, but I was determined to help in whatever way I could. The coach rearranged and built the team around me, placing each runner strategically according to her strength. I was good at getting out of the block and running the curve, the second leg runner had the
Sisyphus is the king of a city. He is very smart, but a cheater and lier and is known for being evil. At one point he even got his niece pregnant in an attempt to kill his brother. The gods are not happy with him and so they send Thanatos to keep Sisyphus in the underworld but then Sisyphus outsmarts Thanatos and escapes. He is also able to escape a second time with the excuse that his wife
Although I had only participated in the school Cross Country team for two years, I felt very connected to the team and wish I had participated my sophomore and freshmen year as well. Over the two seasons, I have made many great friends and learned the importance of working hard to achieve my goals. Throughout my life, my parents have pushed me academically, but never really encouraged me to try hard in sports or physical activities. Cross country filled that void for me and helped me become a more well-rounded person.
1). Phil’s scenario is similar to Sisyphus’ because they are both stuck in a situation where they have to repeat doing the same thing over and over. For example, Phil keeps reliving Groundhog Day while Sisyphus has to roll a rock up a hill for eternity. Another example of how Phil’s and Sisyphus’ scenarios are similar is how they got themselves into repeating the same day over. Phil was rude to people and did not enjoy the little aspects of life during his stay and news casting in Punxsutawney for Groundhog Day. Unlike Phil, Sisyphus created many crimes that the gods did not appreciate. Phil’s scenario is different from Sisyphus’ because Phil got to change the way he wanted to act and the things he wanted to do. For example, after he realized that he was going to keep reliving Groundhog’s Day, he decided to take advantage of the situation. On one of the days Phil decided to drive foolishly around town with two drunks that he met at a bar and ends up in jail. Since he is reliving the same day many times, he decides to steal money from the money truck. Sisyphus however just gets stuck with continuously rolling the rock up the hill and he has to deal with his “hour of consciousness”.
In all my life, I’ve never had a commitment that required so much of me as track and field, both physically and mentally. Towards the end of my high school career, track and field for me meant having to push through a difficult physical condition known as tarsal coalition, a condition that causes inflammation in my feet. With help from my coaches, I had to learn to endure past physical limitation and strengthen my faith in my abilities. By doing so, I became more confident in myself and I was able to help lead other team members to do the same. Not only did track and field teach me to lead, but it also taught me how to be a part of a team. I learned the value of teamwork through building relay race teams. In all relay races, I was either the
One day Prometheus mad Zeus mad by giving fire to mankind. So Zeus decided to punish Prometheus by chaining him to a rock for many years. Now Prometheus had a brother named Epimetheus who was very lonely since his brother was gone. So Zeus decided to also punish poor Epimetheus. Zeus had the gods’ handyman make her out of clay. She turned out to be a beautiful women.
Like Sisyphus, many people have their rock that they deal with every day. If I had to say what my rock was, I would have to pick school. The reason I picked it, would be because I am forced to go by law not by choice. The unpleasantness of having to go to sleep and waking up early on a daily basis stinks. I must also take classes that do not interest me for about seven hours. Even after school I still have to devote my time to homework. School takes up a big part of my life whether I want it to or not, never the less I must attend to it every day even though it seems pointless.
Sisyphus is a shining example of redemption and modesty. In vanity, the dead Sisyphus tricked the gods so he can continue living in the overworld. It was a life he could not get away with, and eventually Jupiter retrieved him and returned him to the underworld, where he was tasked with rolling a stone boulder up a hillside. However, as he reaches the top, the ball is fated to always return to the bottom, forcing Sisyphus to push until the end of time. Despite this soul-crushing eternity, Sisyphus continues to push. While any of us would be miserable with this monotony, Sisyphus is satisfied simply with the challenge. It is a pure modesty that you cannot find anywhere else. It also exudes traces of existential thought; after all, if it has no
The purpose of Richard Taylor’s, “The Meaning of Life,” is to portray the life of Sisyphus in Albert Camus’s, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” as a meaningless life, in which Taylor portrays as a “perfect image of meaninglessness.” In Camus’s story, Sisyphus has committed certain crimes that got him into trouble with the gods. Hence, receiving a punishment by being forced to push a rock up a hill. However, to make it even worse, once he reached the top of the hill, the rock would just roll back down to the bottom, therefore having to repeat this labor for eternity. The motivation behind this discipline was to demonstrate the pointlessness of life since there was no want to demonstrate his life will never end. The question of what’s the meaning of life is compelling to think about, but the more time spent doing it the more fascinating it gets. There are ways to avoid having a meaningless life, but Taylor’s theory sticks to either living a happy life or a meaningless life.
When I was twelve years old, I enrolled in my local Catholic school after being homeschooled my entire life. In the spring of seventh grade, I decided that I wanted to try track and field. This seemingly minuscule decision would become something that would greatly impact me for the next few years when I fell while jumping over a hurdle and tore my ACL and meniscus. I was told that I would need surgery, and I was devastated. To my twelve-year-old self, it seemed as though the world as I knew it was coming to a drastic end. However, my outlook on the situation would soon change in an unlikely way.
The myth of Sisyphus focuses on a king who was said to be deceitful and spiteful in nature. He was supposedly
During, 2nd period an insane idea came to my head while we had morning announcements. Mrs. Pingree was advertising a program called TRM. Running was a hobby for many people and I wouldn’t think to make it an activity that I would do. In 7th grade, I remember running in PE every Tuesday despising and abhorring every moment, each and every second. It all happened so quickly. I was just positive that I would quit within the first month at minimum. That same evening I went Ms. Pingree’s classroom to join the program. I was more ecstatic than I should have been. I still have no idea why. It was 26 week commitment. It meant that I needed to come to every practice every week. Practices were on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and on Saturday mornings. It was miraculous that some people could make it to all of those practices every one of those 26 weeks, I
One activity that has helped me grow a tremendous amount over the past four years has been my involvement with cross country and track. Running and competing on a team has helped me grow in confidence and as a leader. It has taught me the value hard work and discipline. It has taught me how to embrace challenges, and, above all, it has taught me how to learn and grow from past failures.
I had apprehensively tried out for high school soccer, knowing that kids from surrounding towns, who had all played travel on flashy, winning, teams, would be my competition. All I had wanted was to make that freshman team, to be part of a soccer program that in recent years had been a championship winning team. Fortunately my hard work payed off and I made that team. It was during my time in the school soccer program that I had not only grew as a player but met some of the people that I now call my best friends. The team required dedication,
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian writer, who made an enterprising contribution to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy. Camus was a moralist as well as a political theoretician and stood in high public esteem not only in France but also all over Europe after World War Ⅱ. Albert Camus spent a dismal childhood with poverty and bereavement of his father’s death. In his school years, Camus became an avid reader, developing a lifelong interest in literature as well as profoundly opened his eyes to philosophy. Therefore, Camus principally dealt with philosophy themes in his work. In this short biography of Albert Camus, we will explore his philosophy of absurdism and its effect on Camus’s morality. Besides, the reader will be examining Camus’s influences on existentialism.