Whether you believe it or not… you might be living like Sisyphus.

Have you heard the myth of Sisyphus?

Condemned by the gods, he was forced to roll a massive boulder up a mountain—only for it to tumble back down, again and again. Forever.

Albert Camus reframed the myth—not as a tragedy, but as a truth about modern life.
He said:

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Because meaning isn’t something we find.
It’s something we create—through conscious choice.

And that’s the difference between suffering…
…and recovery.

But here’s the modern twist Camus didn’t account for:

Sisyphus didn’t have a phone in his pocket.

He wasn’t being pinged every 2 minutes.
He wasn’t chasing serotonin microbursts on TikTok.
He wasn’t losing hours to inbox dopamine.
He didn’t scroll to avoid his fear.
He felt it. He faced it. He kept walking.

Most of us don’t.

We say we’re tired. Unmotivated. Lazy.
But chemically? We’re just depleted.

We’re trying to push a boulder uphill with no dopamine left, no serotonin in the tank—and a brain that’s terrified of the emotions waiting in the silence.

We don’t avoid the task.
We avoid what the task makes us feel.

Guilt. Shame. The fear of being not enough.
The risk of saying what we want—and hearing “no.”
So we scroll. We caretake. We perform.

Not to pass time.
But to numb time.

And the more we do that…
The less our nervous system remembers how to come back.

This isn’t just burnout.
This is a form of addiction.
Not to substances—
But to patterns of overgiving, pleasing, performing, and chasing external stimulation just to feel okay.

And pretending it’s “just a bad habit” won’t help.

Jesper is a Radical Honesty Trainer Candidate in Mt. Ranch, California. He’s also a RH Board member, and one of the owners of RHI.

Upcoming Workshops led by Jesper: