“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards.”
So begins Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, where he deliberates on the questions of life and suicide. The last chapter, and the namesake of the title, begins, “The 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.”
Is life a futile hopeless labor? Are we all Sisyphuses trudging along the path of life, reluctantly, and unsure of whether we should at all make all that effort?
Recently there have been some remarkably ghastly news that have sent shudders across society. A car accident in the early morning, involving two brothers and a young boy (son of one of them) led the police to a mansion that housed three murdered persons (the wives of the two brothers and the daughter of one of them). Preliminary investigations revealed that they were a business family who lived lavishly, but at some point, returns must have dwindled, because in the recent past, they had accumulated debts of crores of rupees. So the brothers decided to take the lives of their wives and kids and then end their own. In another shocker, a father killed his own daughter (who was ill) before ending his own life.
Even if situations are not that dramatic, we often hear of such incidences. A couple of months back there was the following news: there was this woman who was working in a bank, her husband was working in some IT firm, they had an eleven year old daughter, and had both her parents alive. She went to office the previous day but didn’t come back home. So the family reported to the police and next day the police found that she had gone alone to some guest house/hotel and checked in, when she didn’t order any food for dinner or breakfast the next day the hotel people contacted the police and they found her in the room, she had consumed two bottles of insecticide and had died.
Why do people, apparently having everything that a person could ask for, decide to end their life? Jibanananda Das, one of the greatest Bengali poets, describes a suicide in his famous poem আট বছর আগের এক দিন (one day, eight years ago). He describes the circumstances where a man commits suicide, though, apparently, he didn’t have any obvious reason to do so. He was married and had a family of his own, his wife and child were beside him (বধূ শুয়েছিলো পাশে— শিশুটিও ছিলো; প্রেম ছিলো, আশা ছিলো), there was love, there was hope, and yet he just felt like dying. In fact, had the earnest desire to die (মরিবার হ’লো তার সাধ).
শোনা গেল লাসকাটা ঘরে
নিয়ে গেছে তারে;
কাল রাতে— ফাল্গুনের রাতের আঁধারে
যখন গিয়েছে ডুবে পঞ্চমীর চাঁদ
মরিবার হ’লো তার সাধ;
বধূ শুয়েছিলো পাশে— শিশুটিও ছিলো;
প্রেম ছিলো, আশা ছিলো— জ্যোৎস্নায়– তবু সে দেখিল
কোন্ ভূত? ঘুম কেন ভেঙে গেল তার?
অথবা হয়নি ঘুম বহুকাল— লাসকাটা ঘরে শুয়ে ঘুমায় এবার।
এই ঘুম চেয়েছিলো বুঝি!
So apparently he had a very fulfilled life by all standards, yet he decides to die, wants to die. The poet talks of tiredness – that’s not related to any of the tangible measures of well being – not love or family or children, not financial wellbeing, not fame, but rather a “jeopardised surprise” (বিপন্ন বিস্ময়) that plays along in our blood and tires us. Death frees us of that tiredness. A feeling of exhaustion that overpowers our senses jeopardising our very urge to just live.
জানি— তবু জানি
নারীর হৃদয়— প্রেম— শিশু— গৃহ– নয় সবখানি;
অর্থ নয়, কীর্তি নয়, সচ্ছলতা নয়—
আরো-এক বিপন্ন বিস্ময়
আমাদের অন্তর্গত রক্তের ভিতরে
খেলা করে;
আমাদের ক্লান্ত করে
ক্লান্ত— ক্লান্ত করে;
লাসকাটা ঘরে
সেই ক্লান্তি নাই;
তাই
লাসকাটা ঘরে
চিৎ হ’য়ে শুয়ে আছে টেবিলের ’পরে।
And every living creature wants to live – a toad living in abysmal condition still begs for another dawn that comes with warm love, even a mosquito within the confines of the mosquito net lives loving the force of life. Because every living being’s natural instinct is to try to live. Everything tries to move away from dying till the last available moment, yet he willingly goes to embrace the end of it all.
তবুও তো পেঁচা জাগে;
গলিত স্থবির ব্যাং আরো দুই মুহূর্তের ভিক্ষা মাগে
আরেকটি প্রভাতের ইশারায়— অনুমেয় উষ্ণ অনুরাগে।
টের পাই যূথচারী আঁধারের গাঢ় নিরুদ্দেশে
চারিদিকে মশারির ক্ষমাহীন বিরুদ্ধতা;
মশা তার অন্ধকার সঙ্ঘারামে জেগে থেকে জীবনের স্রোত ভালোবাসে।
But human lives are different? We don’t want to live like every other living creature? There are spaces in us that can’t get filled?
There’s another poem titled “বোধ” (Sense/feeling) by Jibanananda that echoes similar feelings. ‘That there’s this sense working in us, an emptiness, a void, a blankness, a vacuum during prayers, nothing to seek, everything seems so futile, purposeless. This is not want of love or peace, a sense gets born, that doesn’t let me be, that grows and makes everything else seem irrelevant.’
স্বপ্ন নয়,- কোন এক বোধ কাজ করে !
স্বপ্ন নয়- শান্তি নয়-ভালোবাসা নয়,
হৃদয়ের মাঝে এক বোধ জন্ম লয়!
আমি তারে পারি না এড়াতে,
সে আমার হাত রাখে হাতে;
সব কাজ তুচ্ছ হয়,-পণ্ড মনে হয়,
সব চিন্তা – প্রার্থনায় সকল সময়
শূন্য মনে হয়,
শূন্য মনে হয় !
And we become lonely, ever so lonely, even being amongst everyone, we’re so very lonely, so different. ‘Am I not like them who’ve come to propagate the human race? My heart? My mind?’
সকল লোকের মাঝে ব’সে
আমার নিজের মুদ্রাদোষে
আমি একা হতেছি আলাদা?
আমার চোখেই শুধু ধাঁধাঁ ?
আমার পথেই শুধু বাধা?
জন্মিয়াছে যারা এই পৃথিবীতে
সন্তানের মতো হয়ে,-
সন্তানের জন্ম দিতে দিতে
যাহাদের কেটে গেছে অনেক সময়,
কিংবা আজ সন্তানের জন্ম দিতে হয়
যাহাদের; কিংবা যারা পৃথিবীর বীজক্ষেতে আসিতেছে চ’লে
জন্ম দেবে-জন্ম দেবে ব’লে
তাদের হৃদয় আর মাথার মতন
আমার হৃদয় না কি?- তাহাদের মন
আমার মনের মতো না কি ?-
তবু কেন এমন একাকী ?
তবু আমি এমন একাকী !
Jibanananda was unquestionably a very astute and perceptive poet who was completely and unerringly able to think through the thoughts of a person before he commits suicide. Because this seems to be exactly that which drew the woman to her irreversible decision too. Apparently she had a fulfilling domestic life – something that people spend their entire lives trying to ensure, to earn for – she even had her parents. Yet all of it meant nothing. She just didn’t want to live – not for husband and daughter and parents – not even for herself. She had a job, so it wasn’t financial hardships. What else could she have wanted? What else can any woman possibly want? What did she want to escape from that impelled her to escape from life?
Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, died by assisted suicide (according to Wikipedia, “Assisted suicide, also known as physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes drugs to end their life) on March 27, 2024, three weeks after his 90th birthday, in Switzerland (a country where PAS is legal). In fact he went to Switzerland… to die. He wrote in an email earlier:
“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am ninety years old. It is time to go.”
Who are we to decide when it’s time to go? Because after all, our lives are not entirely ours. Had Kahneman’s children hugged him closely and made him feel loved and wanted enough inspite of his ailments, would he still wish to go? Would he still have gone?
Because ultimately we live for others, just as much as we live for ourselves – through our work and lives – in our professions and at home – we are constantly spending every bit of our lives, our time and energies, doing and thinking about others’ wellbeing. Poet Sunil Bhandari writes, “Because the fact is that our breath, our life, is also a collective. We are made of the efforts, the hope springs, the heart carvings, the soul bindings, the body cravings, the thought mouldings of all who love and care for us. We start being someone and then are slowly changed and created out of what others see us as. What might start as an opinion, an illusion, starts getting recreated. We then are what we make of ourselves, but are also deeply vented and grooved by what our world thinks of us.”
And therefore, our lives can never be entirely ours – our presence, our existence is so much intertwined with those of our near ones, and theirs in ours, and that our lives can never be thought of in isolation. And therefore it cannot be our decision to end it either. In the same vein, Bhandari, once again, writes, “If our presence makes a difference to the lives of someone else, we are not only our own. If our mere breath gives solace to someone else, we are not our own. If mere presence, without words, without effort, makes someone’s life feel complete, then our life is not merely ours.”
And we have also seen instances of how hard ending one’s life could be. One is reminded of Somerset Maugham’s famous short story, The Lotus Eater (a reference to the Lotus eaters of Greek Mythology, who led a life of indolence), where the protagonist gives up his job in London to spend his life in a small cottage on the island of Capri. He arranged in finances in a way that he would be able to support himself for a fixed number of years (till he is sixty years old), with the assumption either he will naturally die by the end of it, or will commit suicide by the end of it.
It turned out that he did not die naturally, and after having sold his assets was still unable to make ends meet, and so decided to end his life. He shut himself up in his cottage and lit a charcoal fire to fill the room with carbon monoxide, but somehow with ample leakages, his suicide attempt seemed half-hearted and it failed. He survived but with grave brain damage and lived out the remainder years of his life in very deplorable living conditions. Maugham therefore wanted to show that it wasn’t easy to end one’s beloved life.
The other day there was this newspaper article in The Statesman that said Finland is named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025. Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings. Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order.
Country rankings were based on answers people give when asked to rate their own lives. The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “Happiness isn’t just about wealth or growth — it’s about trust, connection and knowing people have your back,” said Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. “If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other.”
“Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple: sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size. In Mexico and Europe, for example, a household size of four to five people predicts the highest levels of happiness, the study said.
Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings.
As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population.”
So one must find the light at the end of the tunnel – would the families survive if their friends and relatives reached out to them, if they reached out to their friends and relatives? In earlier days with joint families, and societies being much more closely knit, much more supportive of one’s kins and neighbours, it would be hard to imagine such circumstances where entire families could choose to end their lives. The growing importance of virtual friendships and relationships, no doubt add fuel to the flames of isolation and loneliness. Solitude and depression become a commonplace circumstance instead of being of rare occurrence. Virtual existences, instead of binding and bringing people closer in warm bonds of camaraderie, in physical proximity of each other and in forging genuine relationships, in fact, fans the frosty breeze of separation and solitariness.
But Camus urges us to think positive. In the preface to “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Camus writes, “The fundamental subject of “The Myth of Sisyphus” is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate. Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although “The Myth of Sisyphus” poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.”
And hence, concluding in words of Camus again:
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.
Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox.
So life maybe a desert, but it’s upto us to create forests in it, we may be given a huge stone to roll up a mountain knowing very well that it will roll back down again, but it’s us who will have to accomplish the feat, it’s us who will have to arrange to have meals together, and look out for each other’s back, it’s us who will have to return lost wallets and show kindness to others, it’s us who will have to feel the breeze and the sun on our skin and start living, start wanting to live like the toad and all living beings, it’s us who will have to stop being lotus eaters and start seeking like meaningfully, not just spending it like a burden, it is up to us to be happy Sisyphuses.
Soumyanetra Munshi, Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata)
