Humans & Sisyphus: One & The Same
By Jedd, Year 12
These words and their smiths were once heeded, revered
Still taught today but get lost to young ears
As if whispers of ages past have been drowned
By the clamour of a world too fast, too loud.
Many people die at 25 but aren’t buried until they are 75,
our lives a series of steps in a dance they never chose,
Waltzing through a routine of days that blend and blur
While the spark that once ignited our soul is smothered.
In our youth, we dared to dream, to strive towards the
heights,
but somewhere along the way, we surrendered,
trading ambition for comfort, passion for security
And the struggle itself, which was once enough to fill a
man’s heart,
became a faint echo of a time when we were truly alive,
a distant memory.
The world today, with its distractions and diversions,
forgets the stories of these lost souls, who once imagined
Sisyphus happy in his toil,
finding meaning in the endless pursuit,
Even as the weight of the boulder pressed down upon
him.
But now, the struggle is dismissed as futile,
the journey seen as pointless without the promise of a
clear destination,
and those who still push against the stone are pitied or
worse ignored altogether.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbear-
ably unhappy,
Wrote a soul who understood the paradox of existence,
That in our deepest sorrow, we find our truest self,
stripped of pretence, raw and real.
But who listens to such truths today?
In a world that seeks constant pleasure, that flees from
pain and discomfort,
The idea that suffering could bring clarity is almost
blasphemous,
A relic of a darker, less enlightened age.
I am free, and that is why I am lost,
Another voice cries out from the past, warning us of the
dangers of unbounded liberty,
Of a life without purpose or direction.
But in this age of boundless choice, where every path is
open yet none are clear,
The message is obscured, forgotten, buried beneath the
weight of endless options.
These words, these voices, were once heeded, revered,
But now, they drift like ghosts through a world
That no longer remembers how to listen,
That has lost the art of hearing the wisdom of the ages,
And in doing so, has lost something of itself, something
vital, something true.
So let us remember, if only for a moment,
The voices that once guided us,
The stories that shaped our understanding,
And the truths that, though forgotten,
Still have the power to guide our way.
This poem, Humans & Sisyphus: One & The Same, is an excerpt from Experienced at 17 a poetry collection written by Jedd Bailey in Story Factory’s Year of Poetry program. In this program, young people commit to attending workshops for a year and write their very own poetry collection, which is professionally edited, published and launched into the Sydney literary landscape.