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This Ancient Greek Tactic Will Allow You to Stay Happy Forever
The secret is in the phrase: “Behind the mountains are more mountains.”
“But Kazantzakis takes this idea further; he proposes that even if Sisyphus succeeds in pushing the rock all the way to the top of the hill, he would then seek a higher hill, and start a new ascent, for the ascent itself is the enlightenment.”
-From the Introduction to Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
Opportunities to fill your life with happiness are everywhere. They are abundant, and the Greeks knew how to tap into that abundance in order to create enduring, never-ending happiness that would never leave them.
They arrived at this idea by turning a cruel punishment on its head and transforming it into something life-affirming, enticing, and just plain awesome.
I’m speaking, of course, about the punishment meted out to Sisyphus, the guy who, in Greek mythology, cheated death by escaping from the underworld and was punished by being made to roll a giant rock up a hill for all eternity.
The idea was that such a boring, repetitive, meaningless task would be the most soul-crushing punishment imaginable, but Albert Camus, one of the most famous philosophers of the 20th century, looked at the terms of that punishment and said:
