I’m Not Sisyphus

As a student of psychology and philosophy, I’ve mused, pondered, debated and have written about Sisyphus, Greek hero to some, Greek tragedy to others. To summarize, Sis, as I like to call him, is sentenced to push a boulder up a hill every day for eternity and when he reaches the top of the hill, the boulder falls back from whence it came. Sisyphus is cursed to repeat this every day, but he does it with stoicism and a sense of duty. That sends a message to the poor and downtrodden that their struggle is admirable, if not godlike. That message was a previous point of contention for me.

In January 2026, I was medically cleared one year after experimental spinal surgery to get me walking again and save my life. My medical team was, and still is, in disbelief at my comeback and asked me, “So what’s next?”

I said, “I probably need to take two to three years just to heal.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. So, the next day I went snowboarding and skibiking, then started a new full-time academic program for neuroscience and advanced human healing. Oh yeah, I was also teaching and coaching disabled athletes on the mountain three to seven days a week while running our nonprofit. By May 1, I couldn’t get out of bed.

Since my medical sabbatical started in 2017, my focus has been on healing, health, recovery and rehabilitation. For over 23 years, I was undergoing surgery after surgery to rebuild my broken body. In my excitement about accomplishing what was deemed “medically impossible” by the medical world, I thought I’d finally found freedom from this suffering. Turns out a metal skeleton isn’t a magic cure after falling over 120 feet.

Then May 1 hit. I was done with finals and had completed my research and ski season, but I couldn’t physically get out of bed. I’m an amputee with a cyborg-like skeleton and severe spinal cord injuries. To say my body needs a lot of attention to function at all is an understatement of epic proportions, but I function at unexplainable levels despite my injuries. Then I realized I’m stuck in a modern-day Sisyphus scenario.

I have these painful things, tedious things and time-consuming things I have to do daily to keep myself above ground now. It isn’t an option. Pay my dues daily or die a slow, miserable death. It is my priority over everything else now. This reality came as a gut punch in the first week of May this year.

So, instead of trying to push through pain, exhaustion and unprecedented brain drain, I set back out on a Sisyphus-like summer. I put a couple of thousand miles on my bikes, spent a couple hundred hours in the water and days on end immersed in nature.

My mind and body began to heal quickly, and I broke my vow of no competitions and competed in a 900-mile bike race. But for the most part, I stuck to nature, healing and fitness every day for 120 days until I was medically cleared. I was finally medically cleared from my C-spine fusion on Sept. 15, 2026, after completing my first year without major surgery in over 23 years.

Despite the good news, I had to fight a major battle with depression when I realized that my future, especially if I want it to be an extended one, is going to require me to embrace this Sisyphean life. It was mentally and psychologically hard for me to come to terms with this new existence after 23 years of unimaginable suffering, but my reality is that the suffering and beatings are going to continue daily.

At one point while doing a healing session outside this summer, I screamed to The Universe, “When the fuck do I get to stop suffering for a nation who gives zero fucks about me?” My reality is that “the cavalry” isn’t coming to save me. The world is going to make me push this boulder myself, which sucks a little extra since my wrist is destroyed, and this happened in service to my nation. Luckily, I have come up with a medical solution for that too, but in the end, it’s still my boulder to push.

I’ve railed against the message of Sisyphus in the past, but it has become my own reality. Perspective changes everything. Suffering just to suffer is unnecessary in our modern world, or so we think until events in life change your trajectory and perspective. I was looking forward to this freedom from suffering, but it didn’t go away; it just changed form and appearance.

So, in a turn of events I didn’t see in my future, I’ve had to re-embrace my life sentence of daily pain and suffering. But unlike Sisyphus, my suffering leads me to something positive: thriving in life, not just surviving. Without my daily effort, my daily suffering, I would die. Sisyphus dutifully carried out his daily suffering, but it led him nowhere. Mine has led to freedom and a life that shouldn’t have been.

I embraced the suck, the suffering for 31 years to get me rebuilt after falling over 120 feet to what should have been my death in 1994. I thought this was a path to less suffering, but maybe it’s just a path to a new type of suffering, a suffering that adds value to life. Today, my suffering leads me to a life of thriving, a life of joy, and a life that wasn’t supposed to be. The story of Sisyphus will always be a bit tragic to me, but it isn’t my story. Today, I thrive and live again despite a plethora of catastrophic injuries, and that is what matters and will propel me through this life because there’s no point in surviving if you aren’t thriving. RLTW

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Shane Jernigan is a medically retired veteran, nonprofit founder, and adaptive athlete. He served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Ranger Training Brigade, and the 173rd Airborne, and after a catastrophic low-altitude malfunction in 1994, remained on active duty for another 11 years before retiring in 2005. Since then, he has worked as an international tech entrepreneur, founded 75th Adaptive Sports & Wellness, and written for The Havok Journal about catastrophic injury, recovery, pain, trauma, and the challenges disabled veterans face.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.