Who was Sisyphus and what did Camus mean?

1the question

Albert Camus was a French philosopher who asked the biggest question there is: if life has no built-in meaning, why not just quit? He answers with an old Greek myth.

2the myth

Sisyphus was a cunning king punished by the gods forever. His sentence: push a huge boulder up a mountain, watch it roll back down, then start again.

3the absurd

Camus says this rock is not ancient news — it's every one of us. Wake, work, eat, sleep, repeat, forever, no final finish line ever reached.

4the twist

His shocking twist: don't despair, and don't fake hope either. Just accept the pushing itself as the whole point, with no reward waiting at the top.

5the ending

So Camus ends with a famous line: we must imagine Sisyphus happy — because he owns his rock, and owning your fate, absurd as it is, is freedom.