The final image Camus offers us in The Myth of Sisyphus is not a man at the top of the mountain. It is a man pushing. The rock has not arrived. It never will. And yet the pushing is enough.

This cuts against nearly everything we are taught about success and meaning. We are told to set goals, achieve them, and then set new ones. The satisfaction is always located at the finish line. The work before it is merely what you endure to get there. But Camus inverts this completely. The finish line is an illusion. What actually fills your life is the labor between starting and never quite arriving.

Think about the projects you remember most fondly. The ones that shaped you. Were they satisfying because of how they ended, or because of what the work demanded of you? The late nights, the failed attempts, the small breakthroughs that led to new problems. The struggle, not the resolution, is where you were most alive.

This is not a consolation prize. Camus is not saying “at least you tried.” He is saying that the trying itself, pursued with full awareness, is the thing. Not a substitute for meaning, but the only meaning that was ever available to you.