The Morale of the Story -- Sisyphus Took Action

 When my life went to shit in 2022, I had about as much motivation for being alive as a depressed Sisyphus. 

Wake up? Why? So I can push that fucking boulder back up that goddamn mountain again?

My inner dialogue while awake went something like this:

What a LOSER and worthless piece of trash person you are. What a waste of trees' exhales--unworthy of the oxygen you greedily consume while feeling sorry for yourself. Ungrateful, absolutely ruddy cunt. 

(Yes, at that time my inner critic somehow sounded like a pissed off Gordan Ramsey). 

I even hated going to sleep, because I knew my dreams would plague me too with reminders of how inadequate I was.

My husband was obviously worried, and he did his best to console me. My appetite had disappeared with my will to live. I subsisted on Walmart brand turkey sandwiches and apples, or greasy slices from the local pizza joint, as my love of cooking also went on a seemingly permanent vacation. 

Retrospectively, I may have dipped my toes in something I now know is called Anhedonia. I'm glad I didn't have a label for it at the time, as that probably would have made it somehow worse.

It was the dead of winter in Ohio too. It was bone cold, cloudy, windy and miserable, which matched my mood almost perfectly. Even though I had not even a speck of joy inside me, I decided I needed to still go to the gym. So I made that effort, and went at least twice a week for weights, and twice a week for cardio.

My inner critic was still awful, but, at least it quieted a little bit when I was punishing my physical body.

I got a call back from a job I had applied for -- an interview at a regenerative farm! After a very unconventional interview, I was hired and started during the coldest week of winter in 2023. My first day on the job it was a toasty 15 degrees F (without windchill).

The manual labor and the hours in the gym started to heal something in me. I was Sisyphus still, but somehow the grunt work and monotony began to feel purposeful. 

I moved mile high piles of shredded corn husks to refresh bedding for sheep. I remembered what the cusp of frostbite felt like (that moment when your hands are so cold they start to feel hot and turn a cautionary deep purple). 

I shoveled pig shit and chicken shit and made compost from it. I learned how to catch baby lambs and bottle feed them because their mother unexpectedly died.

I taught a hundred 2nd graders how to make pickles, and I put my calf muscles to work peddling an old Player Piano, singing Christmas songs in the middle of May with a chorus of children's voices backing up my own. 

I served the public the food we had grown--I peeled bushels of potatoes, cooked pounds of bacon and sausage, and made hundreds of Buckwheat pancakes for dinners we hosted for free.

I did outreach programs at Elementary schools, and taught the next generation about gardening and the importance of regenerative farming. 

 I learned how to be alive again--I learned that Doing is a way of merging Thinking with Being.

While some philosopher's will argue that Being and Doing are wildly dichotomous (here's looking at you Rene Descartes) I argue that in order to truly live, you must have both. You can't think your way out of a problem without having a solid action attached to it.

Depression, Anhedonia, Nihilism--whatever big vocabulary word you want to label the feeling of absolute hopelessness and despair--it won't be fixed by only thinking about it. I [only] think, therefore I am [depressed].

There's a song floating around the internet somewhere (I'll link it here, when I find it), that says "I do it anyway." That even if you feel like a big fucking pile of rancid pig shit, you need to keep moving. Eventually, that shit rots and decomposes and turns into something that can fertilize the future. But it requires a bit of thermogenesis first. It requires metabolism--and metabolism requires expenditure of energy.

You need to fucking move. 

Because you know what Sisyphus did? He took action. He didn't let the rock crush him, even when he knew at the top of the hill that the rock would swiftly cruise back to the bottom. He never stood in its path and let the rock kill him. When it rolled back down, he walked back down the fucking hill and got back to work. He didn't simply think he mostly moved.

It didn't matter if it was hard or easy, or if he was feeling sad or happy or zen. He knew that he must move. 

In modern times, we get stuck in intellectualizing everything into oblivion. Stuck in a mired maze in our minds that has no way out. Sometimes, the way out of your mind, is to be radically in your body. This is why having a dedicated movement practice is not just great for your physical health, but also can double as a sort of somatic therapy. Maybe the lesson of Sisyphus isn't just about "doing the hard thing", but its teaching us that life requires action, even if that action seems repetitive, pointless and menial at times.

When you feel "stuck", get up--MOVE--do something--ANYTHING. Hitch your mind to your body, and get somewhere else. Don't get swallowed up by your couch or your bed and the depressive and insidious tentacles of inertness. 

Push the rock, if only for the sake of movement.