Delve deeper with this week’s Philosophical Insights Premium download. Don’t miss out — add this pdf article to your collection today.

According to a study, people devote an average of 78 minutes to travel every day. This is true regardless of an individual's wealth, location, or mode of transportation. And it is true across 43 countries. Apparently, more efficient travel doesn’t even lessen the travel time. Travelling more efficiently just means people travel further distances each day.

For many people, commuting makes up a substantial portion of their daily travel.

What is the broader significance of all this daily travel time?

The modern world is one in which people live highly routinized lives. People often feel like cogs in a much larger machine that they do not fully understand.

The decline of external sources of meaning in the modern world makes many question the purpose of it all when faced with doing the same thing every day.

The monotony of much daily travel is in some ways like the experience of absurdity that Camus draws attention to in his discussion of the myth of Sisyphus.

In both cases, it can feel as if there is effort without worthwhile gain. Sisyphus' stone always rolls back down the hill, just as the commuter always ends up back where they started - wondering in some cases what they have accomplished as a result of the day's travel.

(For those who are especially tired of their daily commute, it can end up being 78 minutes of strategizing how to get a job closer to home.)

There is at least one difference between the daily commute and the circumstances of Sisyphus. Even when it doesn’t feel like it, there is usually at least some purpose to a daily travel routine, such as supporting daily life, earning a living or seeing people one cares about. For Sisyphus, on the other hand, the punishment was inherently purposeless.

Routinized daily travel is perhaps a toned down version of the myth of Sisyphus. Even so, there is plenty of room for us to feel that it is absurd while we are engaged in it.

Camus argued that acceptance of absurdity is the appropriate response, as opposed to feeling constantly disappointed or devastated or turning to all-encompassing explanations of the world which purport to make sense of it all.

In Camus’ opinion, this acceptance of the absurd can open up the possibility of joy in the repetitive routines of modern life.

📖 Further reading: Reading Camus: The Absurd and the Myth of Sisyphus