June: On Conflict and Courage

GoFundMe for my wife's cancer fund:

https://gofund.me/3682c6720

June 15

How could this happen again? After all that hard work? How many more times—?

Before your thoughts can even finish running their course, you feel your weight shift, your legs and feet moving of their own accord—and back down you go after your rock. 

A sly, almost crazed smile creeps across your face. You’re actually eager to get back down to it. To step behind it and place your hands upon that rough surface, dig your heels into the dirt and push, push, push it back up that mountain.

At this point, you’re not sure it will ever end, but you smile anyway. You don’t care, because you realize—this is your job. This is what you were put here to do. Others might look at you like you’re crazy—but do they get the chance to struggle and push themselves to their limits again and again—to push past those limits when it seems they can go no further?

It’s the struggle that fills your heart, you realize. It’s the struggle that makes the view at the top that much better. Up and down, up and down, up and down. However many times. It doesn’t matter. This is your life. And you’re happy for it.

• Reflection title: Negate the Gods, Raise the Rocks
• Creative inspiration: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
• Reflection Question: What is my rock, and how do I see it? As an external burden I’m looking to shed? Or as a part of me and my life—my story?