a moth defies helios

an overheard conversation between sisyphus and icarus

icarus by galileo chini

You find yourself on your back at the bottom of a hill and your first thought is to turn the moment into a metaphor. God launches an inattentive cyclist at you and you find yourself contorting your bones into the shape of a modern Sisyphus; this is divine retribution: you have become too complacent in your ego and this is God calling your direct line to remind you of your humanity.

The reality is you no longer look both ways before you cross a street (and even after being run over, you still don’t, because what are the odds of being hit twice in one week?), but this doesn’t stop you from milking the situation for what it’s worth. You pick yourself up from the middle of the busy intersection and immediately text your friends “I think I have a concussion.” God sends a boulder your way and you imagine Sisyphus to be an attention-seeking masochist. God sends a boulder your way and you’ll carve it into some twisted form of happiness. God sends a boulder your way and you’ll force it into the shape of your own narrative.

You started going to church because you thought you saw the sun in the eyes of the preacher’s son: this is a secret you’ve buried, even from yourself. You lie to God and you lie to his worshippers, say you are grateful the sun illuminated the world just enough for you to see God, but the truth is you’d rather be touched by the sun than anything divine, even if it burns you alive. Especially if it burns you alive; you were always more Icarus than Sisyphus.

But God is God and you are you, so a lie to God is meaningless and the only lie that remains is the one to yourself. God sees your lie and sends you a boulder to remind you of your humanity; God sees your lie and places a boulder and a mountain between you and the sun. The narrative demands a Sisyphus and God is here to remind you that you do not get to choose to be Icarus if He demands a Sisyphus: you are human and He is God. You keep going to church. You keep pushing the boulder. There is only the rock and the mountain between you and the sun and God may demand a Sisyphus, but that will not stop you from chasing the illusion of being Icarus. You do not know who the joke is on: you or God.

You tell the churchgoers about your theories on Sisyphus and Icarus and God and the sun and they tell you that you are wrong because God is the sun, but the only God you see is an egg you are trying to break out of. God is a cave and the sun is what lies outside it. At some point, in the confusion of Gods and caves and eggs, you’ve lost sight of the sun. You are still going to church and you are still pushing the boulder, but there is no longer a beaming light behind it for you to chase.

When you get hit by the cyclist, your first thought is of annoyance instead of pain, but your second thought is of happiness instead of despair. When you get hit by the cyclist, you are launched onto your back in the middle of the street, eyes blinded by stars that are different from the one you thought you found in the last pew of the church, and you are reminded that the sun isn’t the only star in the sky that could set you ablaze. And you are reminded of how desperate you are to be a fire; you are starting to believe that Icarus didn’t want to touch the sun so much as be it.

You still don’t know if you are Sisyphus or Icarus, but you’ve decided at the very least that it’ll be your decision and not God’s. You know this to be the same hubris that got both Sisyphus and Icarus cursed in the first place — perhaps you have been trying to be God instead of either Sisyphus or Icarus, perhaps it is in the nature of both Sisyphus and Icarus to wish to be God — but it does not matter because you can imagine both happy.

You start asking people if they are a moth or a cockroach and maybe this is the same question in a different font. Moth wins by a considerable margin, but you all still wake up and go to work the next day. Maybe to be human is to be moth and cockroach, Icarus and Sisyphus, all trapped in one body gazing at the same burning rock. Maybe to be human is to forever chase the stars beyond the boulder, hoping one will burn just bright enough to set you on fire.

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