Sisyphus in my dream! A truth I didn't know

I had gone to visit Sisyphus, the mythical figure who was condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. I wanted to meet him and ask some questions, clear some doubts. I wanted to ask why he was being punished, what was the real story and what he thought about the Camus essay, had he accepted the absurdity and meaninglessness of life. Was he really happy? And many other questions. And to tell him about some fictional heroes ( Luffy and Goku) who don’t fear anyone, not even the gods, and the idea of true freedom.

As I was approaching the mountain, I saw Sisyphus with a lot of other people and there was no rock-pushing scene like I had imagined. I saw people shouting and preparing for some battle. Some people had arrived and something was going on. Curiously, I asked Sisyphus what was happening, he told they were rebelling against the gods, that “the gods are the most cruel and evil, they do whatever they want, they have infinite power and we’re going to kill them. We’ll destroy the very existence of life”.

Suddenly I was chasing some train and doing some thrilling action along with Sisyphus, I was feeling very excited, Sisyphus was nothing as I had thought. On the top of the mountain, I expected him to be happy but he was not happy at all, again everything was meaningless and absurd. With a lot of questions in mind and fighting gods, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was dreaming.

Somehow all this new information I wanted to write so that I don’t forget about it, that it’s not like what I had thought, that I was wrong. One must not imagine Sisyphus happy, one must always rebel, no matter what it is, and I slipped into reality and opened my eyes only to search for my phone to write it down. I grabbed my phone under my pillow and opened it and saw the time, I remember it was around 5 am. I opened WhatsApp to send myself a message about all this (for quick notes, I send a message to my own number on WhatsApp). I had gained a new perspective, and I didn’t want to forget it. Surprisingly, I fell asleep without writing it down. And when I woke up later on I didn’t remember a single bit of what happened.

Yesterday as I was handing one of the art by Albert Camus, The Plague, to my cousin, and bragging that he’s a Nobel Prize laureate and why he should read it, I remembered Sisyphus and the famous line that one must imagine Sisyphus happy as he starts his journey again. And fortunately, my brain reminded me of the memory of the dream that I had. That he was not happy, he was rebelling. That he might lose but he’ll never stop, he’ll always find a way to challenge the status quo of the gods.

That as a human we have a choice to accept the absurdness and meaninglessness of life, but always rebel and ask questions. That life is futile but it is the greatest superpower we have. Sisyphus wasn’t smiling as I had expected him to, but he was doing something that he believed in. It gave him a lot of trouble but it’s what he would love to do. One must indeed imagine Sisyphus happy regardless of what he is doing.

This is my personal interpretation of a dream that I had inspired by Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus was a French writer and philosopher who wrote about the absurdity of life, which means the lack of meaning or purpose in human existence. He used the example of Sisyphus to illustrate his idea that we can find happiness in our struggle against the absurd. However, in my dream, Sisyphus chose a different way of dealing with his fate, he rebelled against the gods. He did not accept his condition as inevitable or absurd, he fought against it with all his might.

I think this dream shows me that there are different ways of interpreting life and its challenges and bring me back to the void of nothingness. Some people may find peace in accepting their situation, others may find joy in resisting it. There is no right or wrong answer, everyone has their own perspective and choice. However, I also think that rebellion is not always easy or satisfying. It can also bring pain and frustration. Sometimes we may rebel for the wrong reasons or against the wrong enemies. Sometimes we may rebel without knowing what we want or how to achieve it (like how I dropped out of my college, haha funny).

Rebellion is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. It is a way of expressing our freedom and dignity as human beings, but it is also a way of seeking justice and meaning in a world that often seems unfair and chaotic. Rebellion is not just a negative act of defiance, it is also a positive act of creation. It is not enough to destroy what we don’t like, we also need to build what we do like. Rebellion is not only a challenge to the gods, it is also a challenge to ourselves.