Sisyphus

What I find most interesting in the myth of Sisyphus is that while rolling the boulder up to the top of the mountain, even if Sisyphus decides to let the boulder roll back to the foot of the mountain, or if for some mischief it goes down because he was tired, exhausted, fainted, or for any other reason, he must go back to the foot of the mountain and roll it to the top again.

The real punishment is not rolling the heavy boulder uphill, it is doing this task endlessly, over and over again.

The only way out of this misery is accepting that the gods were right. He fails when he chooses to stop rolling the boulder to the top. He fails when he loses all of his willpower and accepts defeat, not when the task he is condemned to do fails.

This reminds me of Nietzsche's "Until death, all defeats are psychological". For Sisyphus, who had put Death in chains, even Death cannot defeat him. Only his willpower can.