Hey Reader,
I'm sitting here five months out from knee surgery, and I still can't squat.
Can't run. Can't do the training I was doing this time last year. Every checkup, my surgeon looks at the scans, nods, and says the same sentence.
"Everything looks good. It just takes time."
I know he's right. I also want to throw something across the room every time he says it.
Rehab is the least glamorous work there is. No scoreboard. No crowd. You make small, unimpressive movements in a small room, and the reward for finishing today's session is getting to come back tomorrow and do it again.
The boulder goes up. The boulder rolls back down.
I'd be lying if I said I've been at peace with this. I completed the 29029 Everest challenge on a knee that wasn't ready - climbed the equivalent elevation of Everest in 34 hours, 13 ascents up the mountain at Snowbasin - and I did it in part because I refused to let a body I couldn't fully trust dictate what I was going to be able to do.
That's the version of me I like.
Then I came home to the small room and the small movements and the same sentence from the same surgeon.
Everything looks good. It just takes time.
And that's actually the point of this.
I've been on this mountain before, friend. In 2017, I tore my Achilles and spent a year in a version of the same room, doing a version of the same movements, being told a version of the same thing. I got through it on one sentence I repeated more times than I can count.
Do what I have to do until I can do what I want to do.
That sentence carried me through the tendon recovery. Then it carried me through a much worse year in business the year after. It's carrying me through this knee right now, on the mornings I need it to.
But there's something the Achilles taught me that I keep having to relearn.
The Sisyphus story we've been reading wrong
There's an old Greek story about a man condemned to push a boulder up a mountain forever. Every time he gets it to the top, it rolls back down, and he starts over. The story usually gets read as punishment. Endless work. No final win.
Albert Camus read it differently in 1942. He figured the struggle up the mountain was enough to fill a man's heart, and that we ought to picture the guy content.
I think about that a lot from the physical therapy table.
Maybe Sisyphus learned to like the climb. Maybe he switched shoulders one day and walked it backward the next. Maybe he made a game out of the process because the outcome was never arriving.
Maybe content wasn't the point. Maybe engaged was.
Here's why this matters:
There's no final summit in any of this. No point where you finish getting in shape, finish leading well, finish being a good spouse, and get to coast on the balance. There's today's boulder, today's climb, and today's decision to put your hands on it.
Loving the work more than the win is the only version of this that lasts.
Wins are occasional. Work is Tuesday.
What this looks like off the PT table
You have a boulder too, friend.
Maybe it's the training. Maybe it's the pipeline that doesn't move as fast as you want it to. Maybe it's the relationship you're rebuilding at a pace that feels glacial from the inside. Maybe it's the version of your leadership that's still catching up to the role you got promoted into six months ago.
Everything might look good. It might just take time.
And if the boulder is going to roll back down anyway, you might as well be present for the push.
One rep today
Take the least glamorous rep in your week. The one you do purely because it's required. The one where nobody's watching and no scoreboard is moving.
Pay attention while you do it. Don't rush it. Don't try to earn your way past it.
Find one thing in it worth doing well.
That's the summit today. Same one you'll have to climb tomorrow.
Go compete.
I'm cheering for you, Reader,
Say hi π on Instagram or LinkedInβ