We have found it so hard to believe, so easy to disbelieve. Every good thing has suffered. –Don Welch, “An Interview with Don Welch,” Mark Sanders, On Common Ground
As I was loading photos into the new digital picture frame I received from my daughter and her family for Christmas, I came upon a photo of my grandson, Griffin, as he worked valiantly to rescue minnows that were being flushed through the culvert under our pond dam after a recent downpour. I remember the day well, how he scooped as though his life depended on it, carrying coffee can after can full of minnows from the river raging through his yard to the pond where he dumped them, returning quickly to bail again. This was Sisypean labor. For every minnow he saved, a dozen more were swept down the torrent that gushed through his yard into a ditch of cattails where they would die. This was a lesson in futility, as we worked, shoulder to shoulder, to save the same minnows that steamed through the culvert again almost as quickly as we rescued them.
But what do you say to a child-hero whose resolve is so pure, whose heart is so full? Oh, I could’ve schooled him on futility, all our scooping and living and loving slipping through our fingers–literally and metaphorically–too soon. I could’ve encouraged him to give up the fight and retreat to the yard for a game of wiffle ball. I could’ve, but I didn’t. Let him believe, I thought. If just for a time as this, let him fight the good fight. For too soon, the bright fry of these days will be swept away into the hard truth of moments during which he’ll see–with clear and grownup eyes–the futility of such acts.
In his philosophical essay, “The Myth of Sispyphus,” French writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote that “[t]he gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” Immortalized in mythology for the punishment he received from the gods, Sisyphus has become the poster child for futility, endlessly pushing a boulder up a mountainside, only to have it roll to the bottom, where he’d begin the act again. In his essay, however, Camus ultimately concludes that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy,” that perhaps, like Sisyphus, we might find a kind of joy and purpose in the struggle.
It’s one thing to be a child who isn’t aware that his minnow rescue mission is futile, but it’s quite another to be a man who sees the futility of the labor to which he’s condemned. Some regard Sisyphus’ fate as an apt metaphor for postmodern life. You work, you pour your life into some venture, people and place–and to what end? For an exceptional few, there are monuments, written records, and legacies marking their labor. For most us, however, poet W. H. Auden says it best in his poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” when he concludes with these lines regarding Dutch painter, Pieter Bruegel’s “The Fall of Icarus”:
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Yes, for most of us, our lives and deaths aren’t important failures (or successes), and others have places to get to and sail calmly on. This has been the predominant postmodern sentiment, one grounded in a belief that our actions are largely futile and our lives largely unremmarkable.
In going through my father’s files and papers, I’ve been reminded again and again of how he championed a worldview founded on turning defeat into victory by refusing to be defeated. In poetry, he advocated “writing up,” even in the midst of stylistic trends that celebrated “writing down,” rejecting more traditional virtues of beauty, truth, and goodness and replacing them with irony, futility, and utility. In life, he celebrated the lives of those like his grandmother who struggled to keep her farm afloat during the Dust Bowl years and my mother’s grandmother who immigrated from Germany to Nebraska as a teen and ultimately worked as a housekeeper, raising two sons alone when her husband abandoned her. In love, he looked to my mother’s unflagging optimism and courage in the face of cancer, economic and family challenges. He lived his words: There is no more heroic charge than to begin again.
In the first few years after my retirement, I thought a lot about my life’s work. Professionally, this work culminated in my last position in which I was able to use what I’d learned over decades to affect change in one school district. I was–and am–proud of this work, for at the end of my career, I’d learned much from my successes and failures as an educator and was given an opportunity to share this with other educators as a professional development provider. Still, I was scooping minnows–passionately and with purpose–that would quickly be swept away. Within a year of my retirement, there were few remnants of my work alive. There was little to suggest I’d ever worked there, save for the memories of a few teachers. Some could argue that I was rolling the stone of my convictions up the education mountain of fickle preferences and trends, to no real avail. Some could argue that the best work of my life came to naught.
And yet, I’ve also thought about what I’d change now if, when I began my work there, I knew what I now know. And I’d have to say nothing. I’d change nothing. As my sister says (wisely), that was your work to do then. Indeed. There is a kind of heroism in work that some may call futile. After all, what’s the alternative? To regard every task, every word or deed as pointless? To never begin for fear of having to face those for whom your work will neither be an important success or failure? To sit at the bottom of the mountain in the shade, scoffing at those who roll their stones up each day? To sail calmly on as others strive for ends they may or may not achieve?
For years, I faced classrooms of students who quickly decided that the work of American literature or composition was futile because they’d never need such work in the “real world.” Having decided this, they often resolved to get through these courses by refusing to begin at all. That is, they committed to completing only what was absolutely required–without engaging in the work–and resigned themselves to enduring the required semester(s). But there were also those who believed they could benefit from the best thinking and writing of the best authors and speakers, who willingly pushed this challenging work up the mountains of the course, and who suffered every good thing they read and discussed. Most of these students wouldn’t go on to become English majors or to use what they’d learned in literal, practical ways in their careers. Still, they refused to see the work as futile, and instead, regarded it as heroic. This work, they argued, was necessary for those who wished to become better humans.
We’ve all known exceptional individuals like these students. We’ve witnessed the heroic futility of our children and grandchildren as they eagerly take on tasks most adults would regard as futile. We’ve lived and worked among such individuals who often quietly go about the business of beginning again, putting their metaphorical backs into the work of each day. We know these people, and we know futility. But perhaps we don’t recognize the impact of our responses often enough. I’ve tried to imagine what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t grown up in a family that saw many of my labors–some more futile than others–as heroic. Clearly, there are times to pack it in, to acknowledge that to continue in the same way hoping for different results is futillity (or insanity). But there are other times when we should celebrate the conviction that drives us, even as we fail (especially as we fail).
Like my father, I fear that we may be losing the heart for such celebration. Driven by our well-intended (but often damaging) desires to protect ourselves and others from futility, we may discourage those who would begin again. We may find it increasingly hard to believe in heroes like Vallie Welch and Minnie Zorn. And we may fail to understand Camus’ claim that we can imagine Sisyphus–and others who find purpose in apparently hopeless labor–happy.
