The trick is to keep going.

Grand ideas are easily thought up, but cannot be manifested without suffering. I say suffering and not work, because work is suffering. A sweet mental anguish envelops the mind as it stares through the eye sockets at an unfinished painting. The hands crack and bleed as they pull out the 99th weed out of a bed of roses. A ballerina will break her ankle in the middle of a solo, and keep dancing.

But sometimes, to keep going one must be resurrected from the ennui. And in order to rise to life again, one must first undergo a necessary death.

I've rolled the boulder all the way up the hill. But now I am here and have nothing to do. Roll back down, boulder, off with you. I will follow slowly, because it is not a pain but a joy to roll you back up again.


(Painting: "Sisyphus" by Franz von Stuck.)