Rather Be Sisyphus Than Prufrock

I recently started rewatching Two Broke Girls, a sitcom about two waitresses, Max and Caroline, hustling in Brooklyn while trying to save $250,000 to open a cupcake business. On the surface, it’s a light comedy, but this being a rewatch, and knowing how their journeys were going to be, it got me thinking about the vulnerability of it all: that of not having the courage to dream, that of insecurity, that of perseverance, and most importantly, of this very raw feeling when working towards a goal, failing and starting over and over again, knowing not if it will work out.

The tension between ambition and self-doubt, while it may feel personal and overwhelming when it plays out in one’s own life, is not unique. We see a myriad of versions and variations of this struggle appear across time, myth, poetry, drama, and novels. Writers return to it because it reflects something deeply human: the fear that our efforts will not be enough, the suspicion that we are destined for mediocrity, and the fragile hope that perseverance might still be the right move.

Are we doomed like Sisyphus?

On any long journey that demands perseverance,, I think we all fear the fate of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is a figure in Greek mythology who was punished by the gods, to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. Taking the punishment a bit out of the story, if Sisyphus's goal was to get the boulder to the top of the mountain, and he never managed to do it, what a horrid state to be in.

But as I was looking up the story, I came across the Wikipedia article on The Myth of Sisyphus. In this collection of essays, the author ends the book with the line: “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Having not read the book, I was left quite confused. What do you mean? If the goal was to take the boulder up the mountain (again, forget the punishment bit), how can Sisyphus possibly be happy, repeating the same futile task, since his efforts never seem to amount to anything?

But what is the alternative? To despair? To never push again? Or to have regretted ever having started this journey at all?

To never have tried at all

Because there is another danger besides endless effort, and that is never daring to act at all.In T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the speaker is paralyzed by fear and self-consciousness, asking endlessly, “Do I dare?” Unlike Oblomov, who spends most of his life lying on a sofa, daydreaming about plans he never begins, retreating into a life of comfort and avoidance, Prufrock is plagued by a deep awareness of unfulfilled potential and the monotony of his life, feeling stuck , “pinned and wriggling on the wall” like a trapped insect, unable to escape his discomfort or to move or act. He even claims it would have been better for him to have been “a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” This sounds like a far worse plight.

So inaction, I argue, is definitely a worse hell than Sisyphus. But then , insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

Is it really insane to keep trying?

In Two Broke Girls, every time Max and Caroline’s savings collapse back to zero, it looks like they are right back where they started. But they are not. Each failure forces them to grow, Max in her willingness to trust and dream, Caroline in her grit and humility, and both in their ability and skill to run a successful business. There are countless stories and memes about people giving up right before they struck gold like about how Edison tried hundreds of times before finally making a working light bulb.

Even for non-cyclical paths, the stories echo the same truth. Frodo, in The Lord of the Rings, faces defeat after defeat, but he presses on, despite feeling unequal to the task. In Moana, when Maui abandons her, and the boat is wrecked, Moana breaks, tossing the heart of Te Fiti into the sea and begging the ocean to “choose someone else.” Yet she reclaimed her spirit, and ended up saving the island.

But not every struggle ends with triumph. Moana does save her island, but she could just as easily have been doomed to a Sisyphean cycle, or worse of that of self-destruction.

Maybe, you should quit

Not every story praises perseverance without end. Some warn of the danger in clinging too tightly. Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick refuses to quit his obsessive hunt for the white whale and destroys not only himself but his entire crew. His tragedy is not that he tried and failed, but that he refused to let go even when the pursuit had become self-destructive. In the same way, Steinbeck’s The Pearl shows Kino throwing the pearl back into the sea only after it has cost him his child’s life. These stories sit opposite to Sisyphus or Frodo: they remind us that perseverance is not the same thing as blindness, and that quitting can sometimes be the only act of sanity left.

So what is it?

I pray I don’t sink into the comfort of inaction like Oblomov. I hope I never lose myself in blind ambition like Ahab. And I fear most becoming Prufrock, forever hesitating, asking “Do I dare?” until life answers for me. If I must choose, I’ll take the weight of the boulder over the weight of regret. But not blindly, not forever. Max and Carloline planned in S1 to start “Max’s Homemade cupcakes”, and to save the money by doing several service jobs. However in season 6, while they do successfully start a business, they don’t do it the ways they imagined it to. Money does not come from savings from service jobs. The business isn’t a cupcake store, but a dessert bar, something they adapted into. So ultimately, if and when my boulders I’ve worked so hard to lift come crashing down the mountain, I pray that I find the self-love and courage to push it back up, and the wisdom to know if it’s time to aim for another mountain.

While I do not ascribe to absurdist philosophy, stripped of that I think Camus is still right. If Sisyphus could look at Prufrock’s plight, a man who never dared, who never acted, he would not envy him. He would see that the struggle itself toward the heights, even if endless, is better than the hell of self doubt and fear of unrealized potential.

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