The ancient Greek Sisyphus was regarded as a shrewd man by his peers. But unfortunately for him, he broke society’s laws of good conduct. For example, he had children with his brother’s daughter Tyro. As punishment, the gods banished him to the underworld, to the kingdom of the dead, Tartarus. Repetition was just about the worst penalty the ancient Greeks could imagine, and the punishment the gods devised for Sisyphus was cruel and harsh. He was sentenced to roll a huge boulder up to the top of a high mountain for the rest of his life. But when he finally got the rock to the top, it would always roll down the slope on the other side. So each time he reached the top, Sisyphus had to walk back down the mountain into the valley and start again, day in and day out, year after year, for his whole life. Each time Sisyphus had almost reached his goal, he was forced to start from the beginning: a thoroughly meaningless and tedious task with no end.

I wonder how Sisyphus felt, as he struggled up the mountainside with his boulder for the ten-thousandth time. Joey wondered to himself as he walked home after his fateful meeting with Maria. He felt a kind of kinship with the poor Greek. What did he think as he stood there at the top of the mountain watching the boulder roll away from him? Why didn’t he commit suicide? How did he survive? The salesman’s head was swimming with these kinds of questions as he wandered through the park. He quite fancied the idea of himself as a hero who won the beautiful princess and half the kingdom, or at least a knight in shining armour who rescues beautiful maidens in distress from fearful dragons’ caves. He certainly wasn’t satisfied with his role as a lowly, anonymous office worker in the city. He wanted to rise above the rest and be the company’s best-ever salesman, win big deals and bask in the limelight like a Hollywood star. He had ambitions. Or at least, he had had ambitions up until now. But now, in his eyes, his job suddenly bore an uncanny resemblance to Sisyphus in the underworld. Each day he had to ring customers, attend meetings, present solutions, write offers, argue about prices, draw in contracts and deals, all just to meet the year’s sales target of x number of millions of dollars. And at the end of the year, when he had finally reached the top of the mountain, the quota was reset back to zero and he had to start all over again.

In the distance he could see the skyscrapers above the treetops. He counted 120 storeys on one of the buildings, 120 windows up and 30 across. In the middle of the looming edifice he suddenly caught sight of the window cleaners, dangling there in their flimsy boxes. He quickly worked out that there were 3600 windows on each side of the building, so altogether these poor buggers had 14 400 windows to wash. How long would that take? And how long until the windows were dirty and needed washing again? His thoughts returned to Sisyphus, and then to the taxi drivers who tirelessly drive people up and down the avenues of the metropolis. He thought about the train drivers in New York’s own underworld – the Metro. The stream of people that needed transporting to some place or other never stopped. Were their jobs absurd? A waste of time? Did they ever finish?

What he wanted most of all was to reconcile himself to his feeling of impotence and the meaninglessness of life. Whatever happened, he must not lapse into a life as some poor loser, a ‘victim’ who went round feeling sorry for himself and hoped each day that he would win the lottery. He was well aware of the link between gambling and hopelessness. And he saw how the hopeless souls in the community had stopped believing in their own abilities, preferring to place their faith in the one-armed bandit, the lottery ticket, bingo or the little white ball on the roulette tables of Atlantic City. Gambling was an expression of meaninglessness. No, if he was going to get anywhere in life, he would have to do it on his own and forge his own luck. He would have to find his own internal driving force. If he was to be consistent and honest with himself, he had two choices: to jump into the river or accept his fate. This wasn’t a difficult choice for Joey. And once again he found himself thinking of Sisyphus wandering back down the mountainside, whistling a merry tune to himself as he went. He imagined how Sisyphus must have planned which route he would take up the mountain next time and how he probably felt he had built up a close, almost brotherly relationship to the boulder that lay down at the bottom of the valley just waiting to be pushed back up again.

Slowly, his melancholy began to dissolve. With the passing of time, his spirits lifted as he walked home under the oak trees. He realized he would have to woo Maria each and every day and that he would always have to expect her answer to be ‘no’. But that was no reason to give up. One day, maybe the gods would have mercy on him, reward him for his toils and optimism, and place a ‘yes’ on her lips. It was the same with his work. It was ridiculous to lie down and give up just because the boulder had rolled down from the mountaintop a couple of times. Joey would do what he imagined the ancient Greek must have done: he would accept the situation and try to make the best of it.

The salesman began whistling as he wandered homewards, ready to face a new day at work.