More random thoughts time. One, endorphin rushes are kind of nice in the winter, and kind of not. I remember my friend and I used to drive back to the university from jujitsu with our shirts open or off and the windows down on really cold nights, just because our bodies were still generating so much heat and we were inured to the cold by the rush. Last night, I wasn’t anywhere near that worked up, but was still able to stand chatting in a parking lot for upwards of two hours without giving much thought at all to being cold or not, and I was just wearing sandals and a light sweater. Of course, as soon as I wound down and rehydrated with a cold drink down the road, I went to get back to my car and my body completely crashed. Headache, full-body shivers, clenched jaw and some loss of control over my breath. So, yay for endorphins in one sense, and crappy for when they run out.

Other random thing. Back in existential philosophy class we spent a bit on exploring the idea of the myth of Sisyphus (eternally straining to push a huge boulder up a mountain each day, only to have it inevitably roll down again) as a metaphor for life. There were several angles to approach it by – say, pointlessness and inevitability of misfortune on one end of the spectrum, and on the complete other end in the spirit of trying even if it’s pointless, maybe part of what defines humanity. So, anyhoo, the random thought I had. Saying we do accept the myth as a metaphor/analogy for human life, we’re generally thinking that the singular Sisyphus is representative of all human life in a kind of synecdoche sense.

But what if people aren’t as isolated from each other within their own egos (which define us as individuals) as they think they are? If we turn the metaphor back upon itself, might Sisyphus, in being representative of humanity, be in fact the great mass of all of us pushing that boulder up the slope, in that being human and going through our lives even if misfortune or death is inevitable is us pushing our own boulder up the slope? I guess what I’m saying is, what’s to say that we have to consider it as each of us having our own burden – what’s to say that we’re not all connected in some fashion and in fact are helping or hindering each other with our common, shared boulder/burden of living in how we treat each other?