Can you be happy doing something pointless?

Camus picks the hardest case on purpose: a man condemned to roll a boulder uphill forever, watch it roll back, and start again. No progress, no completion, no audience. Then he says we must imagine him happy.

The argument turns on where Sisyphus's freedom is. Not in the task, which is fixed. In the walk back down — the interval where he sees the whole thing clearly, is not deceived about any of it, and does not beg for it to be different. His lucidity is what the gods cannot touch, and scorn is the one response that makes the punishment fail.

This is doing something specific to the misery of repetitive work, and it is not consolation. Camus is not saying the boulder secretly matters or that you will be rewarded. He is saying that the demand for the work to matter is the lever being used on you, and that letting go of it is not defeat but the end of a hostage situation.

Whether it is livable is the fair question. It is easier to admire in a paragraph than to hold on a Wednesday, and Camus never claimed otherwise — the absurd has to be kept alive by being constantly re-confronted, which is itself a kind of labour.