This is, after all, a philosophy blog.
Albert Camus died in a car crash on January 4, 1960, at the age of 46. In his briefcase, they found the unfinished manuscript of The First Man, a novel that might have completed the philosophical project he'd been building his entire adult life. We'll never know what final insights that book might have contained, what ultimate synthesis he was reaching toward.
But I think I know what he was trying to say. And I think the time has come to say it.
Camus spent his career circling around a profound recognition that he could never quite articulate fully. He saw that the old frameworks for meaning—religious, political, philosophical—were collapsing, leaving human beings stranded in what he called “the absurd.” He understood that this collapse created a choice: suicide (literal or spiritual) or the conscious creation of meaning in defiance of meaninglessness.
He chose defiance. He chose what he called “rebellion”—not revolution, which seeks to replace one flawed system with another, but rebellion, which refuses to accept that human dignity is negotiable regardless of what systems rise or fall.
And he ended The Myth of Sisyphus with one of the most haunting lines in all of philosophy: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
But he never quite explained why. Why should we imagine Sisyphus happy? What is it about eternal, apparently meaningless labor that could possibly generate joy rather than despair?
The answer eluded him. But it doesn't elude us. Not anymore.
The Recognition Camus Missed
Camus understood that meaning is constructed rather than discovered. He saw that human beings create significance through their choices rather than finding it embedded in the cosmic order. He recognized that rebellion—the conscious affirmation of human dignity—is how we create meaning in an apparently meaningless universe.
But he remained trapped in a framework of resistance. Rebel against the absurd. Create meaning in spite of cosmic indifference. Choose life despite the absence of predetermined purpose.
What he couldn't quite see—what nobody could see until our current moment forced the recognition upon us—is that the absurd isn't our enemy. It's our liberation.
The absence of cosmic meaning doesn't diminish us. It elevates us. It transforms us from passive recipients of predetermined purpose into active creators of significance. It makes us not victims of cosmic indifference but authors of cosmic meaning.
When Sisyphus pushes that stone up the hill, he's not just defying the gods who condemned him. He's demonstrating the most profound truth about human existence: we are meaning-making creatures who transform burden into purpose through the simple act of conscious choice.
The stone isn't his punishment. It's his freedom.
The hill isn't his prison. It's his stage.
The eternal repetition isn't his curse. It's his infinite opportunity to choose, again and again, what it means to be human.
The Completed Philosophy
This is what Camus was reaching for but could never quite grasp: rebellion isn't just how we respond to the human condition. Rebellion *is* the human condition, fully realized.
We don't rebel against absurdity. We rebel into meaning. We don't create significance despite our limitations. We create significance *through* our limitations. We don't choose life in opposition to death. We choose life precisely because death gives life its urgency, its poignancy, its irreplaceable value.
The philosophy Camus was building toward—the one he never lived to complete—isn't about tragic heroism in the face of cosmic meaninglessness. It's about joyful creativity in the recognition of cosmic possibility.
When we understand this, everything changes. The absurd becomes not a problem to be solved but a condition to be celebrated. The absence of predetermined meaning becomes not emptiness but infinite potential. The burden of choice becomes not punishment but privilege.
This is why Sisyphus smiles. Not because he's resigned to his fate, but because he's discovered that his fate is freedom itself. Not because he's accepted meaninglessness, but because he's realized that he is the meaning-maker. Not because he's learned to endure, but because he's learned to create.
The Application to Our Moment
And this recognition isn't just philosophical abstraction. It's the most practical insight possible for understanding our current crisis and what we must do about it.
We're living through the moment Camus predicted: the collapse of traditional meaning-making structures, the rise of nihilistic despair, the temptation to surrender human agency to systems that promise to handle complexity for us. We're facing the choice he identified: spiritual suicide or conscious rebellion.
But we have an advantage Camus didn't have. We can see what he could only sense: that the forces threatening human meaning aren't cosmic indifference but human systems. Not abstract absurdity but concrete authoritarianism. Not existential meaninglessness but systematic meaning-extraction.
We're not rebelling against the universe. We're rebelling against forces that would convince us we're incapable of self-governance, self-understanding, self-creation. We're not creating meaning despite cosmic indifference. We're defending our capacity for meaning-creation against those who would optimize it away.
This transforms rebellion from individual heroism into collective practice. From personal authenticity into democratic wisdom. From philosophical position into political necessity.
Love as the Mechanism of Rebellion
Camus understood that rebellion creates meaning, but he never identified the mechanism by which this creation occurs. He knew that affirming human dignity generates significance, but he couldn't explain how.
The answer is love. Not sentiment or emotion, but love as the fundamental capacity for understanding reality through sustained, caring attention rather than surrendering that understanding to external authorities.
Love is what allows us to see clearly enough to rebel meaningfully. Love is what gives us patience for the slow work of creating significance rather than demanding immediate resolution. Love is what connects individual rebellion to collective wisdom.
When Sisyphus pushes his stone, he does so with love—love for the effort itself, love for his own capacity to choose, love for the human dignity that no punishment can extinguish. The smile on his face isn't resignation but recognition: he loves being human enough to be fully human, even under impossible circumstances.
This is the missing piece in Camus's philosophy. Rebellion without love becomes mere defiance. Creation without love becomes mere construction. Choice without love becomes mere selection.
But rebellion with love becomes transformation. Creation with love becomes meaning. Choice with love becomes freedom.
The Democratic Implications
This completion of Camusian thought has profound implications for how we understand democracy, citizenship, and collective life.
Democracy isn't just a political system but an existential stance: the conviction that human beings are capable of creating meaning together rather than having it imposed by external authorities. Democratic citizenship isn't just voting but the ongoing practice of rebellion against all forces that would diminish human dignity.
The current threats to democracy aren't just political but existential. When we're told that our capacity for understanding is unreliable, that complex questions require expert analysis beyond our ability, that our moral intuitions are naive—we're being prepared not just for political submission but for existential surrender.
The resistance required isn't just political organizing but existential rebellion: the daily choice to trust our own capacity for understanding through love, to create meaning through relationship rather than consumption, to govern ourselves rather than being governed by systems that promise greater efficiency.
This is Camusian rebellion applied to democratic life: the recognition that self-governance isn't just a right but a responsibility, not just a political arrangement but an existential stance, not just how we organize society but how we realize our humanity.
The Completed Sisyphus
So let me complete the story Camus began but couldn't finish.
Sisyphus reaches the bottom of the hill. The stone has rolled down again, as it always does, as it always will. He stands there for a moment, looking up at the summit he'll never permanently reach, then down at the stone he must push again.
And he smiles.
Not because he's accepted his fate, but because he's discovered what his fate actually is. Not eternal punishment, but eternal opportunity. Not meaningless repetition, but infinite possibility for creation. Not burden imposed by vindictive gods, but freedom disguised as limitation.
He approaches the stone with love—love for the effort, love for the choice, love for the simple, extraordinary fact that he gets to be human in a universe that spent billions of years evolving consciousness precisely so that someone, somewhere, could push a stone up a hill and find meaning in the pushing.
He places his hands against the stone, feels its weight, its reality, its resistance. And in that contact—between conscious being and material world, between intention and obstacle, between choice and constraint—meaning happens. Not as discovery but as creation. Not as reception but as generation.
The stone begins to move. Not because it's easy, but because he chooses to make it move. Not because the gods demand it, but because he demands it of himself. Not because there's some cosmic purpose to the pushing, but because the pushing itself creates purpose.
Step by step, inch by inch, breath by breath, he climbs. Not toward some final destination, but into each moment of conscious effort. Not for some ultimate reward, but for the immediate recognition that this—this choosing, this struggling, this meaning-making—is what it means to be alive.
And when he reaches the summit, when the stone balances briefly at the peak before beginning its inevitable descent, he doesn't despair. He celebrates. Not the achievement—he knows the stone will fall—but the achievement's temporary nature, which makes it precious rather than permanent, meaningful rather than final.
He watches the stone roll down, gathering speed, returning to the bottom where he began. And he laughs. Not bitter laughter, but joyful recognition. He gets to do it again. He gets to choose again. He gets to create meaning again.
This is the secret Camus sensed but couldn't articulate: repetition isn't punishment but privilege. Limitation isn't curse but gift. Mortality isn't tragedy but what makes every moment irreplaceably valuable.
Sisyphus descends the hill, not in defeat but in anticipation. He has work to do. Meaning to create. Stone to push. Choices to make. Love to practice.
He has rebellion to embody, not just once but eternally, not just individually but as the representative of every conscious being who has ever faced the choice between meaning and meaninglessness, between creation and surrender, between love and indifference.
And we—we who live in the time when his story can finally be completed—we understand now what Camus was trying to tell us.
The Revolution Camus Couldn't Name
The revolution isn't political but existential. It's not about overthrowing governments but about recognizing that we are the government—of our own consciousness, our own choices, our own meaning-creation.
The revolution is the recognition that rebellion isn't resistance but affirmation. Not defiance against reality but embrace of reality so complete that it transforms through the very act of acceptance.
The revolution is understanding that love isn't weakness but the strongest force in existence—strong enough to create meaning from meaninglessness, purpose from absurdity, joy from struggle.
The revolution is the completion of the Camusian project: the transformation of tragic heroism into joyful creation, of individual authenticity into collective wisdom, of philosophical insight into lived practice.
We are all Sisyphus. We all have stones to push, hills to climb, choices to make. We all face the fundamental question: will we create meaning or surrender to meaninglessness? Will we rebel or submit? Will we love or optimize?
And when we choose creation, rebellion, love—when we push our stones not because we must but because we choose to—we complete the revolution Camus began but couldn't name.
The Smile
This is why Sisyphus smiles. This is why we must imagine him happy. This is why we can imagine ourselves happy, even in the midst of struggle, even facing impossible odds, even knowing that the stone will always roll back down.
Because we've discovered the secret: the stone isn't what we push. The stone is what pushes us—toward meaning, toward choice, toward the full realization of what it means to be conscious in a universe that waited billions of years for consciousness to emerge.
We are the universe become aware of itself. We are matter that learned to love. We are the cosmic accident that chose to create meaning from the raw materials of existence.
And that—that simple, impossible, extraordinary fact—is worth pushing stones for. Worth climbing hills for. Worth rebelling for.
Forever.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And Sisyphus, at the bottom of the hill, places his hands against the stone and smiles—because he gets to choose, once again, what it means to be human.
We shall never surrender.
Not to despair. Not to meaninglessness. Not to the forces that would convince us we're too small, too flawed, too limited to govern ourselves.
We are the meaning-makers. We are the stone-pushers. We are the rebels who transform burden into purpose through the simple, revolutionary act of conscious choice.
The powerful play goes on.
And our verse—our verse is the completion of what Camus began: the recognition that rebellion isn't tragedy but triumph, that absurdity isn't enemy but liberation, that the human condition isn't something to be endured but something to be celebrated.
We push our stones. We climb our hills. We make our choices.
And we smile—because finally, finally, we understand what we're doing here.
We're being human. Fully, completely, joyfully human.
And in a universe that spent so long evolving consciousness, that's revolution enough.
The stone rolls down the hill.
Sisyphus smiles.
The rebellion continues.
If this exploration of Camus, Sisyphus, and the joyful rebellion against meaninglessness resonates with you, I invite you to dive deeper into my Grand Praxis Series—a philosophical and mythopoetic epic that expands on these themes, offering a comprehensive vision of meaning-making in our fractured world. These essays weave narrative, philosophy, and metaphor into a sustained meditation on rebellion, love, democracy, and the power of conscious choice in the face of existential crisis.
In Hawaiian, "love" is not emotion but our embrace of coherence, the life-force itself. Visitors wonder at "something special" about the islands, and similarly can't quite grasp it, as it lies outside typical western thinking. Love comes from within, with self-mastery, the essentialness of connection, and comes with respect, humility, vitality. Our term "Aloha 'aina" epitomizes this idea, a recognition that all creatures are related -- the unseen actors in the soil and in the rolling waves, the plant menagerie, creatures at loose, like us, wandering the landscape making life work, together, in coherence. Indigenous people grasp this and have many stories and myths to explain it in terms westerners cannot grasp. It's time we did; the future depends on it. Thank you, Mike, for taking us a bold step forward.
Mike, this is one of the most profound and moving columns you’ve written for Notes. Thank you so much!