This dilemma of living a life of total responsibility, within an existence of only partial knowledge and partial freedom, reflects the suffering of “Mankind drowning in the Great Sea of Birth, Death and Sorrow.” A man who lives in a world without appeal, a world in which God has died, has no one else to forgive him. He will be “punished by his sins, not for them.” And so, each day he must forgive himself, again and again. He is subject to his own personal limitations, in a changing world, designed by a lunatic. Each man is capable of warmth, of loving, of understanding, of extending himself, of being transparent and vulnerable to another. At the same time, and perhaps in the same proportion, he is capable of evil, sham, fraud, and destructiveness, of closing out the other and wantonly using him.

It does not seem to me that things can ever be improved. New solutions breed new problems, and man is not the perfectible creature assumed by his technology. A man can strive to grow, but this pilgrimage is merely an “unceasing journey from what we seem to be to what we are.” Each day, each situation brings with it new uncertainties with which to cope. The world is essentially arbitrary in its movement, predictable only in the least important ways. Yet in each moment of limited understanding and insufficient data, a man must make decisions just as though he knew what he was doing.

Ironically, as a man grows and gains new freedom, he becomes aware that at each point at which he must risk himself anew, aided by his new-found freedom, new experiences for which he is unprepared then present themselves. He confronts new aspects of himself, which, though wonderful, may also be terrible (like becoming a grown-up). The growing edge eats away at itself, and in a sense we have come no further than we were when we first started out. And yet, to be a man, in the best sense, is to be willing to keep moving, though we make no measurable gain. Like Sisyphus, we are destined to forever roll a heavy stone up the side of a mountain, knowing that when we get it to the top, the stone will roll back down again. Yet, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” - Sheldon B. Kopp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUe64FtLs3U&list=PLC49B092999556CD8