Sisyphus

This post really has nothing to do with Canada except that I live here and that's where it happens.

Today I was thinking about Sisyphus, the poor guy in Greek mythology whose eternal task was to roll a huge boulder up to the top of a hill. Of course, this being a myth, the boulder came crashing down at night. Every night. Each morning, he started over.

My task today was at least fun. I was clearing the edges of the driveway into one of our camps. Roy, my might-as-well-be-husband, lets me use his loppers, which he keeps sharp, so the work is easy. I was taking out some small balsams and a couple of spruce, as well as moose maple, tag alder, and mountain ash.

Once you lop off branches or take out the tree, you have to dispose of it, so a lot of the work is dragging trees and branches into brush piles. You're supposed to take them to the dump, but eventually, the brush decomposes and fertilizes the next generation of trees. (Decomposition happens more quickly than you'd think, too, especially with wet weather like we've had for the past six weeks.)

And as is true of many sisyphean tasks, the work feels so good. When the trees come down and the brush pile grows, you really feel as if you've done something substantive. See? There it is.

That satisfaction, of course, is deceptive. Those suckers grow back--not overnight, but within a few years. A wee balsam that you overlook one year can be knee-high the next year. So along the paths to our two camps, there is always brush to clear.

At Roy's house, the full cycle has required a couple of decades. The original builder first took out all the trees, then built the house, then landscaped by planting red pine, spruce, and balsam in neat rows. Now, nearly 25 years later, those trees are huge and block the view of the lake from Roy's deck. So we're taking them out, a few each year. Trees were there, then they were taken out, then they were planted, and now they're being taken out again.

Even this version of the cycle isn't permanent: each tree we take out of a row gives the other trees in that row room to spread out. Last year's "view" disappears next year.

At least I can laugh at it. In other settings--business, for example--sisyphean tasks aren't funny. In the 1990s, I was part of the reorganization of U.S. two national laboratories. I recognize the sense of accomplishment you can feel when you successfully draw an organization chart that makes sense to you.

But the real problem is this: you can't organize yourself out of a problem you behaved yourself into. If behavior is the problem--the sales force has no power or the marketing team is targeting the wrong demographic or the product is shoddily made--then no organization will make the company work well. That doesn't even count the fact that organization charts are all theory, and people sitting around in a room drawing new ones isn't selling or making product.

Compared to my prevous life, today's job was easy. Yes, trees grow. That's their behavior. They won't learn not to grow in a path. You just have to keep whacking them out. Fortunately, that's my idea of fun. Life is good.