Anyways, eventually, as punishment Sisyphus was given the task of pushing a giant boulder up onto a hilltop. Whenever the boulder was up, however, it rolled down right away and so Sisyphus had to do it again and again, ad infinitum.
Hence, people liken repetitive and endless jobs of that type and nature to the unenviable job of Sisyphus.
In our example, the similarity between dealing with diabetes and handling a Sisyphean job is that they have to do it every day, i.e. keeping the sugar level in their blood stable by monitoring their intake of calories all the time. For Type II diabetes, patients can use insulin injections to help correct abnormal blood sugar levels but even then the task is not any easier. They have to watch the amount of insulin intake and they have to watch their diet still.
And the job is unending. Tomorrow, the process is repeated again.
There, the similarity ends, though. Even though diabetics have to handle their diets and everything everyday, they haven’t done anything evil. That’s the difference between diabetics and Sisyphus, let’s make that clear – just to be sure.
All right, here are other examples of people and situations that invoke Sisyphean comparisons:
1. Infectious diseases are one of the great success stories of medicine. Conditions that just a few generations ago blighted humanity are now easily treated or prevented. Mass immunisation programmes, improved sanitation and sterilisation technology, as well as advances in drug development, mean that, for those who live in the developed world at least, infections are no longer a constant threat.
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