Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a Greek mortal whose wiliness angered the gods so much that when he died and had to be forcibly taken to the underworld his particularly fiendish punishment entailed rolling a boulder up a mountain to its summit. It may have taken only a few days, months or maybe even years but, however long it took, however great the toil, when the rock reached the summit it would roll down to the bottom again. Sisyphus begin again, rolling the boulder back up the hill only for the same thing to happen. This would continue for eternity.

His condemnation does not lie in his upset and depression at his task (he does not, after all, refuse the activity and we can assume he is actually compelled to complete it) nor the sheer physical labour he exerts. His punishment is not that he has been given a task to build something at the top of the hill and sees his goal thwarted. 

His torment is eternal, his damnation complete, because of the sheer futility of his task. The boulder goes nowhere up the hill, it goes nowhere down the hill, it has no purpose, no reason (it is easy to imagine why treadmills were originally designed as such a hideous form of punishment in Victorian times. All that energy going to waste, the futility of the activity). Here is the hellish oblivion he must endure- to put effort into nothing, forever, for no reason. 

If purposelessness like that of Sisyphus' is a definition of eternal hell then surely the opposite- purpose and direction- is one meaning of a reason for living, for heaven on Earth, for happiness. Maybe there is no real value for immediate satisfaction or gratuitous sensory pleasure in our lives but, instead, we should demarcate who we are and our reason for being based on our role and objectives. 

If my happiness is based on my productivity, what should I produce and what is my role? According to the Greek gods my existence has meaning insofar as it has utility. How, therefore, am I best utilised in the brief time I have here in Earth?