When reading Camus' take on Sisyphus, it is initially difficult to both envision ourselves as Sisyphus and to grasp how he could possibly be happy (as opposed to simply defiant).
Things become more clear if we reinterpret the myth of Sisyphus to everyday tasks. I think the best example of a modern-day "Sisyphic" chore is cleaning/organizing the spaces where we live and work. Just as Sisyphus could give up and stay at the bottom of the mountain, we could give up our struggle against kipple and cease to tidy up after ourselves. There seems to be no point to cleaning, as what we clean will only get dirty again in the near future. Just as Sisyphus' task to push the rock up the mountain must be endlessly repeated, so must our cleaning.
So why do we clean? It makes us happy. Cleaning itself may not be enjoyable, but the brief period of having an organized space that results certainly does. We are unable to accomplish some one-time, final goal of organization and cleanliness, so the temporary relief becomes our new aim. The same is true of Sisyphus. While he cannot ever succeed in placing the rock at the top of the mountain once and for all, he can succeed in reaching the top temporarily. Thus, that attainable goal, that project that we have set for ourselves, becomes what we strive for. Sisyphus is happy because he has redefined his goal and set a unique project for himself. In continuing to struggle, he continues to succeed.
This reminds me of how my mother describes her "compulsive need to vacuum" as a "study in futility." But behind her humour, she (and I) genuinely derive pleasure from cleaning. And I'm talking like spring-cleaning, like devoting an entire day to detailing every nook and cranny of the house. I think that in addition to the search for that momentary, ephemeral high, cleaning is an example of one's place of living turning from ready-at-hand to present-at-hand. When dirt and dust start accumulating in the corners, one gives the materiality, the facticity of one's place of living great attention. And then one proceeds to exert one's will upon the facticity of one's residency, altering it from being-in-mode-of-dusty to being-in-the-mode-of-clean. Thus, cleaning can better remind us of the distinction between ourselves as freedoms and other ontic beings.
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