Sisyphus Ages, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

"WHAT I'M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION - YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE COURAGE…. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT - IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT."

- John Irving,
A Prayer for Owen Meany

"Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get."

- George Bernard Shaw

Get the Flash Player to see this movie.

- Pillar,
"Not Without a Fight"

It suddenly strikes me that the myth of Sisyphus has such profound resonance – that we have a myth of Sisyphus at all – because life itself is essentially a Sisyphean endeavour.

The only difference is: Occasionally – if you're all of lucky, good, and tenacious – you'll actually get your rock to the top of some hill.

But the thing is: All there is to do then is either hang out and wait for the end (maybe enjoying the view for the first five or ten minutes); or else go find some all-new hill to storm.

The take-home seems to be that one had really better learn to enjoy rock-rolling.

Me (to colleague, recently): It's sort of starting to seem to me that at a certain point you reach this kind of inflection point of life. Before that point, you think mainly about possibilities, and all the good things that might happen to you, and all you might achieve and become. After that point, you pretty much mainly think about all the foreclosed possibilities, and all dreadful things that might befall you, and what you might lose, and how you might end up.

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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