People aren't meant to be comfortable.
I've had that thought following me around for a while, and I don't mean it quite the way it sounds.
I like comfortable. I want a porch swing. I want good food and people I love and a quiet evening where nothing needs to be fixed. I want my life to be manageable.
But the more I watch bodies, brains, and families over time, the more convinced I am that comfort isn't actually the state we're designed to maintain.
We're designed to adapt.
Your body is constantly responding to its environment. Put a muscle under load and it gets stronger. Stop using it and it gets smaller. Change what you eat and your metabolism changes in response. Expose your brain to the same stimulus over and over and eventually it becomes less novel, less interesting, less demanding of your attention.
We're not static things that can be optimized once and then left alone.
And I think this explains something I see constantly in medicine: the thing that helped you at one point in your life isn't necessarily the thing you need forever.
A diet that worked beautifully when you were 35 may not work the same way at 50. The exercise routine that made you stronger eventually needs to get harder. A medication that was appropriate five years ago may need to be reconsidered. Even the habits that genuinely improved your life can become counterproductive when circumstances change.
Adaptation is neutral. Your body doesn't adapt toward "good." It adapts toward what you repeatedly give it.
Give it resistance, and it prepares for resistance.
Give it very little movement, and it prepares for very little movement.
Give it constant novelty, and it starts expecting novelty.
Give it alcohol every evening to unwind, and eventually that becomes part of the environment it expects.
Give it increasingly intense stimulation, and ordinary life can begin to feel strangely quiet.
None of this requires a villain. The body is simply doing exactly what it was designed to do.
This is one reason I'm less interested in finding the perfect health routine than I am in paying attention to what your body is doing now.
Your physiology is not a fixed target. It's a moving system responding to the life you're actually living.
That means health requires a willingness to periodically reconsider things that once seemed settled. Something can be helpful without being permanently helpful. A routine can serve you for years and then quietly stop serving you. A coping mechanism can get you through a difficult season and later become something that limits your ability to move forward.
The question isn't whether you've found the right answer. It's whether the answer you're living with still fits the life you're living.
We don't have to be constantly optimizing ourselves. In fact, I think that can become its own kind of dysfunction.
But we do have to remember that standing still isn't actually an option.
Life changes. We change with it.
The goal isn't to find the perfect place where nothing needs to change anymore.
Maybe the goal is to become good at noticing when it's time to change.
And then, occasionally, when nothing needs to change at all, sit on the porch and enjoy that too.

—Stephane