We’ve engineered inconvenience out of almost every part of daily life. Unfortunately, our bodies didn’t get the memo.
I have absolutely no desire to homestead because I genuinely love modern-day conveniences. I think flipping a switch to turn on a light is wonderful, and I believe air conditioning is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. In fact, it’s something I regularly defend in my own house with the love of my life. We all know how that conversation goes. One of you reading this is the person who says, “Oh my God, it’s hot in here!” (Hi, that’s me.) The other, usually the more budget-conscious one, replies, “You’re wearing pants and a long-sleeve shirt. Go change.” I could easily spend the rest of this article talking about household thermostat negotiations, but that’s not where I’m headed.
What I’m really getting at is this: We’ve become so good at making life easier that we barely have to lift a finger to meet our basic needs. Food can be delivered to our front door. Groceries can be loaded into our car without us ever getting out. We have robot vacuums, remote controls, power everything, golf carts, escalators, elevators, online banking, streaming services and apps that save us time with the tap of a screen.
None of those things are bad. In fact, many of them are incredible. I use plenty of them myself.
But every convenience comes with a trade-off. Every time we remove a little bit of effort from our day, we also remove a little bit of movement. We walk less, carry less, climb less, squat less and generally ask less of our bodies than any generation before us.
For most of human history, movement wasn’t something people scheduled into their calendars. It was woven into everyday life. You walked because you had to. You carried things because there wasn’t another option. You climbed hills, knelt in gardens, scrubbed floors, hauled buckets and got up and down from the ground because life demanded it.
Today, many of us carve out 30 or 60 minutes for a workout, then spend the other 23 hours trying to avoid moving altogether.
We circle the parking lot looking for the closest spot instead of taking the first one we see. We take the elevator up one floor. We send a text to someone who’s in another room. We use the drive-through for coffee, the pharmacy, the bank and dinner. We ask Alexa to turn off the lights while the light switch patiently waits eight feet away. We spend more time looking for the TV remote than we would have spent simply getting up to change the channel.
Individually, none of those decisions matter very much. Collectively, they matter a great deal.
The human body is remarkably adaptable. Give it a reason to become stronger, and it usually will. Give it a reason to conserve energy, and it’ll gladly do that too. Our muscles don’t know the difference between choosing convenience and being forced into inactivity. They simply respond to whatever we repeatedly ask of them.
That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing more obesity, more Type 2 diabetes, more high blood pressure, more chronic pain and more heart disease despite living in the most technologically advanced society in history. We expected convenience to improve our health because it made life more comfortable. Instead, it quietly removed many of the ordinary movements our bodies still depend on.
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to give up modern conveniences to reclaim some of those benefits.
Park a little farther away. Carry the grocery bags in two trips instead of one. Take the stairs. Walk to your neighbor’s house instead of texting. Mow the lawn. Wash the car. Walk the dog one extra block. Stand up while you’re on the phone. Let your body do a little more of the work it was designed to do.
I’m certainly not suggesting we throw away our air conditioners, cancel Wi-Fi or start churning our own butter. Trust me, I’m keeping my thermostat exactly where I like it, assuming my husband isn’t looking.
But maybe our bodies have been trying to tell us something all along. Maybe they were never asking for life to be harder. Maybe they were simply asking us to move through it a little more. Because technology has evolved. Our physiology hasn’t.
