What to Do When You Feel Tired of Taking Care of Your Health

The Japanese practice of daily care and attention

Illustrations by Kaki Okumura

Taking care of your health doesn’t always feel fun or exciting. It’s often seen as something we have to force ourselves to do — at worst, a daily drudgery, at best, a routine monotony. In fact, the responsibility of maintenance in general is rarely seen as pleasurable.

That was how I felt about taking care of my health, until I came across the term te-ire.

Te-ire (手入れ) is a Japanese term that directly translates to “maintenance” and speaks to things that, without regular attention, fall apart. Gardens, homes, clothing, cars, and most material objects require te-ire. The idea is that prized possessions can easily become burdening and expendable without it. This weakening process doesn’t occur overnight, but slowly creeps its way in, as our priorities shift and effort wanes.

But the manner in which te-ire is used is slightly different from maintenance, and I realized that this slight change in perspective can make it feel like something worth looking forward to.

Te-ire encompasses the idea that we build affection for the things we’ve carried for many years, and we become proud of wearing, using, fixing, and growing with these items — maybe it’s fixing up the floorboards in our first house, or maybe it’s something as simple as sewing back the buttons on a jacket we’ve had since high school. Replacing batteries to old watches or polishing our old silver jewelry to its former shine, any act of restoration done with the intent of care, is a way of embodying the spirit te-ire.

There is probably something in your possession that evokes this sentiment. You’ve probably felt and known it before. With te-ire, we are able to develop a kind of love that we can’t feel for our single-use or instantly gratifying items, and a kind of respect for what we own that is built only with time.

The art of maintaining and caring for our belongings is often thought to be cumbersome, but when we slow down to notice, we can also see how this act of care can bring us pride and joy. We can extend this attention to our bodies, and see taking care of our health as something that is not just valuable, but an act to look…