Consider the home you live in.
It requires constant care just to maintain a level of comfort to keep being there. It’s also done in the anticipation of guests (maybe) and understanding this is the place you want to relax in.
While prevention is always the better route, any repairs need to be attended to immediately. Otherwise, the problem exacerbates to the point of a costly overhaul. Of course, this doesn’t even account for those random events such as fire or floods that would require a complete rebuilding of whatever was lost.
But we consider it worth it because it’s still our home and we need to live in it. We go to great lengths to take care of it and make it a place we want to be, even though it’s still just made of fragile building materials that are ephemeral.
Yet, the home we should really be taking care of is the body we inhabit.
This is the home we live in for our entire life and while advances in medicine are allowing us to change out some of the parts, it can’t be replaced. Repairing it is tough, especially as we age, and ignoring the maintenance always comes back to hurt us.
Yet, just like the dwellings we live in, we must strive to make our home a comfortable place to be. We should want to sit with it, enjoy it and every so often, put it to the test to see what it’s capable of.
And just like your dwelling, your body is going to function differently over time and what you need from it will change as circumstances change. However, maintenance is still needed.
Don’t ignore the one home you can’t replace.