A Beatific Reset

Finding small things to carry on in an absurd world

Books in the shed

Autumn is always tinged with melancholy for me. It’s the dying of the light, the vivid colors of summer turning to the dusty hues of fall and then to November’s browns and grays. It doesn’t turn me maudlin. Instead it’s what one might call a good melancholy. My wife might say it’s my Irish showing. But you don’t have to be Irish to know how it feels—like playing a sad song on repeat.

Part of the reason for my state of mind is the world—the fraught election season, the Middle East, an ailing planet. I know many feel this way. Add autumn’s pensiveness to it all and, well, it makes one wonder how to keep from trembling.

My attempt at a kind of solution is not radical or new. But it seems like the right choice at the right time. I’m looking for a reset. But not exactly the kind one might commit to in the early hours of a New Year’s Day. This is different. I’m not sure how to explain it. The best I can say is that it stems from the word “beatific.”

Jack Kerouac coined the phrase “Beat Generation,” but he vehemently opposed how it was being interpreted. Many thought it referred to a group in society that had been “beat down,” were “disregarded,” or “rootless.” Instead, Kerouac said the description came from the word beatific—being in a state of beatitude. He believed his “generation” of artistic compatriots were following St. Francis—artists trying to love all life, attempting to be sincere, practicing authenticity, and kindness. Kerouac said the Beat poets wanted to nurture “joy of heart” in a mad, corrupt, and misguided modern world.

Then there’s Albert Camus.

Influenced by the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, among others, Camus argues in this long essay The Myth of Sisyphus that life is essentially meaningless, but despite this humans still try to form a kind of social order and to seek answers to unanswerable questions. The Greek legend of Sisyphus is used as a metaphor. The gods have condemned Sisyphus to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill for eternity only to watch it roll down again each time it reaches the top. It is this, the persistent struggle, that Camus sees as the absurdity of life. He insists the only way we can face it is to accept it. Not to fight it. Instead, rejoice in the act of rolling the boulder.

These two philosophies—that of the Beats and of Camus—seem to be opposites in many ways. But that’s not what I see. The Beats belief in beatitude—accepting the beatific, the divine, the joy of all of what life can offer, is also an acceptance of the struggles, the kind Sisyphus endured, and with that acceptance comes the joy.

So with this, here I am, considering the words of Allen Ginsberg: The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy! This is the poet rejoicing the act of art and linking it to the act of joy. And at the same time considering the words of Albert Camus: We must imagine Sisyphus happy. Here I am taking on the “artist’s life,” the joy and the struggle. And if one resets under that premise, believing in both the Beats and Camus, then maybe it makes a bit more sense.

What Camus does, and what I hope to do in this “beatific reset” is to not focus on “pushing the boulder” but instead, as Camus wants us to do, focus on the moments between the pushing and the rolling. At the end of each day, after the rock rolls to the hill’s bottom, Sisyphus has a moment of rest, reflection, even freedom. He walks without burden to the bottom of the hill, and although he knows he’ll have to push that boulder again, he instead revels in the time between the struggle and the release, a kind of defiance of fate, and that is what brings Sisyphus a bit of happiness.

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What would this reset look like in practical terms?

Here’s what I wrote in my journal, none of which is either unique or revolutionary. These are simply reminders of what is possible in between the pushing of the boulder and its release.

Reset the body.

• Take control of your sleep. Rest better.

• Move your body.

• Eat as many whole foods as possible.

Reset the mind.

• Return to a mediation practice. Keep it simple.

• Journal. Make it regular yet not a burden.

Reset your social life.

• Contact a friend of family member you have not connected with in awhile.

• Listen more mindfully. Grant full attention.

Reset the spiritual.

• Get out more in nature.

• Do not reject a higher power, no matter what that may look like.

Reset the environment.

• Declutter. (Recently donated dozens of books from my shelves)

• Reduce. (Return to intermittent fasting)

• Refresh. (I added a new cactus to the writer shed)

Reset the intellect.

• Add to my reading list.

• Consume the news that matters.

• Reduce social media scrolling.

• Continue daily word games.

As I sit here at the desk in the writer shed, I am accepting autumn’s golden light through the window, its melancholy energy for renewal in the midst of decay. Beyond the door, my wife is tending to the garden. I asked her earlier if she was finding joy in her tasks this morning, as she appeared a bit overwhelmed with the to-do list. Standing at the glass storm door, her eyes on the front gardens, she did not hesitate. “Yes. I am finding joy,” she said. Happy, she was, in the in-between, inside the joyful space squeezed in after the pushing of the boulder and its tumble to the bottom of the hill where it will wait to be pushed once more.

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“October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all.” —Thomas Merton.

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His latest, Daylight Saving Time: The power of growing older is available now. His novella, American Moon will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.