Life at the Cutting Edge of Reality

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. ~Albert Camus

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the king of Corinth, a clever trickster who offended the gods and was condemned to spend eternity rolling a large stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down before he reached the summit.

As a metaphor for life itself, it works, which is why the myth continues to resonate today. Camus' interpretation of the story as related in his 1942 philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, was a response to the absurdity of our human cravings for meaning in a universe that seems indifferent. He rejects religion and suicide as responses to the absurdity, ultimately concluding that one can live fully without expecting the universe to provide purpose. "One must imagine Sisyphus happy," is a conclusion that leaves many of us cold, but as early childhood educators, we see it in action every day.

As adults, we've learned to strive for summits. To achieve our purpose, we push the stones in our lives, large and small, toward our goals, only to find that even when we achieve our wildest dreams, there are more hills and more stones. Young children have not yet learned the lesson of summits. They see only the rocks and slopes and the adventure of life. 

"No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too," writes Annie Dillard in her book The Living. They go through their days unaware of the absurdity, because, when one embraces the present, not as something to improve upon, but rather as something with which to play, the absurdity vanishes. They know the stone will always roll back to the bottom, and it fills them with wonder when it does.

It's learning that reveals the absurdity. "(A)nd they wear out their brains learning what folks expect," writes Dillard, "and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks." 

As early childhood educators, we get to live with them during that magnificent time of life. We call it naiveté or innocence or ignorance, but it's the paradise, the happiness to which we all hope to someday return. The absurdity is that we've been taught by expectations and competition to think that it's a shining city atop that mythical hill, that's where happiness lies, if only we can get this damn stone to stay up there.

But it always rolls back down.

I'm 64 years old. The children with whom I grew up are now retiring, the summit. But I can tell you it's a false summit. There are still plenty of stones to push. My peers are battling cancer, arthritis, insufficient funds, family traumas, and an ever-changing world from which they, in their retirement, feel increasingly alienated. Kids these days!

This isn't a promise, but I can't imagine joining them if only because the children have shown me that you simply can't retire from life. Yes, you can stop pushing that one particular stone, but there will always be other stones to push. It's not the stone that matters. It's how you approach the struggle.

Immediately before the famous ending, Camus describes Sisyphus as conscious of his fate and embracing it. "His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing." Early in the same concluding passage, he contrasts sorrow and joy, and insists that Sisyphus's conscious return to the rock can take place in joy. This isn't about tolerating or enduring or accepting one's fate, but rather the stronger and stranger claim that happiness is possible. It's how you approach the struggle.

"Each atom," Camus writes, "of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man."

We are meant to conclude that Sisyphus is damned by the gods precisely because his process produces no lasting product. The stone always rolls back down the hill. The gods assume that this makes the punishment unbearable, but the children in our lives find a workaround in the recognition that there are no "products," only "processes," and so too are we.

Children don't stop building block towers just because they know they will always fall down. Indeed, they understand that building is a process that must include the blocks falling down. Sometimes they build the tower for the purpose of knocking it down. They come to us to paint and pretend and bicker and climb and dance and cry and laugh, often all at once. And they come back tomorrow and do it again, not chasing products, but rather immersing themselves as a part of processes that flow and change and come to include everything there is, including themselves as both subjects and agents. And in that, they find joy.

So what if the stone rolls back down? C'mon everybody, let's roll it back up again!

This is life at the cutting edge of reality.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in ways that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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