05/02/24 Self Portrait Series #2 - Sisyphus with a smile - Jig Young
I’m summoning back the inner demons I’ve conquered. The darkness I thought I’ve vanquished years ago.
I’m putting them to work for this period in my life. The intensity. The focus. The obsession.
The daily taming and vanquishing of the darkness and the devil that lives inside of me is Gods work.
I know I can handle them now with effortless ease because of the love and kindness I’m surrounded with.
On remembering why I went back to school. I never wanted to return to college so I could just focus and do 1 thing - build tech startups. Angrily, my mom told that if I was really good I could do both.
“Pag magaling ka talaga tangina kaya mo pagsabayin”
Both school and entrepreneurship.
I told her it was harder to do both. That it was impossible.
My parents have never asked me to be anyone or do anything I didn’t want to do except finish school. I gave it to them. I removed their fears and anxieties about my future in a single stroke. I said thank you for life.
But what my mom said was true.
I can do both.
I did do both.
I met the love of my life, Dianne, by doing both.
I worked double time.
I’m always doing both.
I am BOTH obsessed at work and loving of my and my life.
It’s harder.
For others even impossible.
The advice that you do work first then love later is for the mids. It’s for the lonely and depressed champions. For the kings of the back office. It’s for the paper pushers, excel jockeys, and slide masters. It’s advice for those who defer their best life because they’re “preparing”. That’s not who I am.
I’m the happy and loving warrior in the arena. Never truly winning. Never truly losing. Always fighting. I’m Sisyphus with a smile.
I embrace the futility of it all with strength, love, and kindness.
—
Sisyphus was a tyrant who cheated death twice. As a punishment, he was sent to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down and do it all over again. Camus poised the question “what if we imagined Sisyphus happy? What if we imagined sisyphus with a smile?”