“Do you ever get tired of doing this whole medicine thing?” The young doctor looked tired and defeated. She’d had a tough go recently with hard cases and unkind clients. I didn’t think she was burned out, but she was on that path and was struggling to remember her purpose. “Sure, I do,” I replied. “Everyone who practices for more than a few years goes through a period of wondering why they come back to the clinic again and again. It’s normal to feel this way sometimes.”
This doctor had been practicing for over five years and was the medical director at a bustling urban hospital. The clinic had been growing (largely because of her efforts and leadership), and now, keeping up with the demand was challenging for the staff.
She looked at the floor. “The cases never stop coming, and we never fix anything permanently. We just kick the can farther down the road, and that’s in the best cases. Every day, broken pets come through the door, and if we’re lucky, we patch them up for a while before they show up broken again.”
I knew how she felt. There was a time when I went to work looking for a resolution as well. What’s the point of coming in and doing the same thing over and over? What difference do we make if the problems we “solve” never end? In practice, there is no finish line, no graduation and no mission accomplished. The prize for doing an exceptional job treating patients is simply more patients needing treatment.
As I discussed the challenges of medicine with the doctor, my mind drifted to the challenges I had faced and continue to face outside the clinic. They stemmed from a project my wife and I had started with so much hope — one I imagined would have a clear point of completion. It was the building of our home.
The Dream House
My wife, Alison, and I have a complicated relationship with our house. About a dozen years ago, my wife designed the house with an architect, and we had it built on a plot of land in the forest. The plan was for it to be our forever home, a place of peace that would bring joy every time we walked in the door. Alison and I were thrilled to get started.
Unfortunately, the project did not bring us peace or joy. The builder turned out to be much better at marketing than constructing, the foreman was out of his depth, and the entire process became a game of “Find today’s error before it gets walled in!” We had:
- Wrong-sized bathtubs. (“Don’t worry! We’ll just move the wall.”)
- An improvised roofline that you would not find on any blueprint.
- A room that “missed a footer” and took on an abstract shape.
All this turned out basically OK, mind you, because my wife is brilliant and tenacious. She wrestled the builder, foreman and house itself into submission while I stood behind her and said things like “Yeah!” and “I agree with her!” Still, the builder went out of business and skipped town before the final punch list was completed, and my wife and I have been catching and correcting minor flaws (mostly) ever since.
Recently, however, the required corrections seem to be growing. We have lived in the house for over 10 years at this point, and just when we thought we’d gotten all the construction quirks ironed out, age is beginning to take its toll.
Last year, we had to replace the HVAC unit, among other fixes. This year, we learned that the second-story deck wasn’t built with pressure-treated lumber, and therefore, it must be replaced because of rot. Inside the house, our dog chewed the corner off of the living room rug, our youngest daughter got lipstick stuck in the wheel of her desk chair and ground the cosmetic into a large swath of carpet, and I left the drain open on a cooler full of ice, so some of the hardwood floor in the kitchen now has a distinct waves-in-the-ocean feel to it.
For my wife and me, it has been difficult not to feel defeated. We thought we would have the house we always wanted. Instead, we got the house we always work on. At no point has our house ever felt finished, and I am not convinced it ever will. The question for us has been, “How can we be happy with a house that’s never done?” This sense of an endless, unfinishable task reminded me of the ancient myth of Sisyphus.
Imagining Sisyphus Happy
The French philosopher Albert Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote a 1942 essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, you might recall, was condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain forever, only to see it roll down again before it reached the top.
Sisyphus ended up with the punishment because he tricked the god of death into trapping himself, making humans immortal and ending the need to worship the gods. As you might imagine, the trickery was a big deal to the gods and made them quite angry. The task of pointlessly pushing the boulder was intended to be one of the most horrible punishments the gods could inflict on a mortal being.
Camus argued that Sisyphus could still win. Imagine that Sisyphus set aside his disappointment about the endless nature of his task. Instead of thinking that pushing the boulder is futile, what if he could choose to enjoy being outside and working with his hands? What if he decided to love the mountain, take up birdwatching and get interested in geology, all while making his way up and down the mountain?
Would the task of Sisyphus be a god-level punishment if he felt the same way that serious knitters feel about cranking through yarn, bodybuilders feel about pumping iron, and book lovers feel about working their way through their library? To those who love the process over the result, an eternity of doing a task might become heaven instead of hell.
This, Camus wrote, is the myth of Sisyphus. It’s possible to see Sisyphus not as a man tortured but as the one who tricked the gods. All you must do is picture Sisyphus happy in the process of rolling a boulder.
Getting Older Is Not for the Faint of Heart
The turning point for Alison and me came a few weeks after we learned that dish soap works well in getting ground-up lipstick out of a carpet. Alison celebrated that salvation while I did stretches after I pulled a muscle while sneezing. “It feels good to get something fixed even though there’s still a big to-do list,” she said.
“What if the to-do list never ends?” I asked. “What if our house is getting old just like our bodies are, and it’s going to require us to deal with something always being out of whack until we die?”
“Well,” she replied, “I guess we’d better learn to be happy always working on something that’s out of whack.”
That was the moment when I realized one of the most critical challenges we face in life is deciding to be a happy Sisyphus. We are all pushing boulders up mountains, and the gods will never let us reach the top and live in contentment. Whether it is our job, health, finances, relationships or environment, we are always destined to be fixing, struggling and working.
To see these struggles as the gods intended — as great and terrible tortures that break us down because of their unending nature — is to accept the pain intended for Sisyphus. But to beat the gods, all we must do is understand what it means to see Sisyphus happy. If we can conceptualize a smiling man pushing a burden and finding reward in the doing, rather than in the completion, then we can conceptualize our own happiness.
Each of us faces that challenge every single day. Can we see Sisyphus happy? And if so, can we be the same?
Medicine, Boulders and the Human Condition
So, where does all this leave us? It leaves us with a choice. We can see the endless nature of our tasks (in medicine, homeownership or life itself) as a source of frustration and defeat. We can let the weight of the ever-rolling boulder crush us and resent the gods for our seemingly pointless efforts. Or we can choose to see things differently.
We can choose to embrace the process and find joy in our daily work, small victories and moments of connection. Like Alison celebrating the clean carpet or like Sisyphus finding interest in the mountain’s geology, we can discover meaning and even happiness in the journey. We can become a happy Sisyphus, accepting that the work will likely never be finished but that the doing itself is where life truly happens.
Back in the clinic, I realized I wasn’t just talking to a doctor about the challenges of medicine. I was speaking to a fellow human being about the human condition. We all push boulders, we all face unending tasks, and we all grapple with the question of meaning. And we all have the power to decide how we will face that reality. Will we let it defeat us, or will we find a way to smile, keep pushing and find joy in the ever-unfolding story of our lives? The choice, ultimately, is ours
BE A BETTER LEADER
Dr. Andy Roark has partnered with VetFolio to release the Uncharted Leadership Essentials Certificate. The program provides training appropriate for anyone who leads or manages others. The topics covered include setting a team’s vision and values, building trust, achieving team buy-in, delivering feedback, understanding communication styles, setting priorities, delegating effectively and managing time. Learn more at bit.ly/Uncharted-VetFolio.
IMMOVABLE OBJECTS
One of the world’s largest freestanding boulders sits in the Southern California desert. Giant Rock is almost 100 feet tall, covers 5,800 square feet and weighs an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 tons.