The maths has changed. This is why I’m looking out for myself.
It occurs to me that most of us treat our bodies like a rental property.
Most of us know the stories about horror tenants who don’t pay rent, turn the laundry into a meth lab and burn down the garage.
But that’s not really what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about renters who do a decent job of looking after the place, but aren’t really incentivised to care too much.
They maintain the gardens, keep the place neat and tidy, but that’s all they are there to do.
They’re not going to repaint the exterior. They’re not going to re-do the decking. They’re not going to re-oil the timber benchtops.
And that’s fair enough. The house is the owner’s asset. It’s their responsibility to look after it.
And by looking after it I mean getting on top of little problems that are going to become long term headaches – like getting those leaky gutters fixed before the water starts rotting the walls.
And so most of us should be treating our bodies like owner-occupiers. We should be keeping the place immaculate – partly because we want the neighbours to ohh and ahh when they see us naked, but also because we want to get on top of any problems before they get out of hand.
But that is not what most of us are doing. Most of us treat our bodies like a rental. We do the basics – we eat food, we wash regularly, we trim our toenails. But that’s about it. We’re not thinking about the long-term value of our asset, and how to preserve its value and utility.
And even those of us that do treat our bodies like we own them, do it in a way that’s a bit half-arsed.
You know those owner-occupiers who are like, “I should really fix the roof on the deck before the sun and rain start weathering the decking… ah, maybe I’ll do it next year.”
Generally, we let problems run and then just hope we’ll find a builder/doctor who can patch us up.
We don’t treat our bodies like they’re the most important asset we own, even though they obviously are.
Now, I know a lot of you are going to be hearing this and thinking, “yeah, you’re kinda right… but it’s a lot of effort for what might only be an extra ten years on the end of your life. You’ve got to die sometime.”
And to that I say, yeah, nah, bullshit.
It’s easy to be a bit whatever about 10 years of life when you’re 30 or 40, but I bet you won’t be thinking that way when you’re 75.
And the maths has changed. It just may not be true that “you have to die sometime.”
Medical science is advancing at an incredible pace. My bet is that sometime between now and 2100, the world will give birth to an immortal generation.
They might already be here.
It kind of makes me want to shake my fists at the gods that I might be born late enough to witness the birth of an immortal generation, but not late enough to be one of them.
For me, I’m looking after my health because the more energy I give it, the greater the chances I’ll still be around when we cross the immortality threshold. And if I am, I want my body to be in the best condition possible.
I don’t want the doctors to be like, “Well, Jon, you maybe would have lived for ever, if only you hadn’t brutalised your liver your entire adult life. There’s no fixing that one.”
Right now, investing in your health is a lottery ticket for immortality. I’m going to buy it.
So yeah, don’t treat your body like a rental. Treat it like it is the most important thing you own.
Because it is.