Taking care of yourself is exhausting too: when the body becomes a constant demand

We have always wanted to live longer. What we did not know was what trying to do so would demand of us.
Gilgamesh was the first hero who refused to die. After losing his closest friend, the king of Uruk set out on a journey to the ends of the earth in search of the plant of eternal life. The story appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known epic, written on clay tablets more than four thousand years ago. He found the plant. But while he slept, a serpent stole it. Since then, they say, snakes shed their skin—as if they had inherited, without any right, a form of eternity that was never theirs.

Four thousand years ago, someone had already sensed that eternal life is not lost in battle, but in a moment of carelessness. It slips away when we let our guard down.

And ever since, human beings have not stopped searching. Medieval alchemists sought the philosopher’s stone. Conquerors followed unmapped rivers in pursuit of a promise that always seemed just a little farther ahead. Religions offered continuity where life comes to an end. Modern science has sequenced the genome, identified telomeres, and studied the world’s blue zones, where many people reach one hundred with a serenity that feels almost unsettling.

The “elixir of youth” has gone by different names in every era. But the search has remained the same. And today, for the first time in history, it seems as though we have almost found it. Not in a vial. Not in some hidden underwater plant. But in a set of everyday practices—measurable, repeatable, evidence-based—that promise what no alchemist could ever deliver: a body that does not give in.

We know almost everything. Or so we like to believe. In health, every certainty lasts only until the next study comes along to refine it. We know what to eat and how much. We know how much to move, how to build strength so we do not lose muscle mass with age, how to regulate sleep, how to manage cortisol. We know that intermittent fasting may extend life, that meditation can reduce chronic inflammation, that loneliness can be nearly as harmful as smoking. Never before have we known so much about the body. And never before have we watched it so closely.

Caring for the body is no longer simply a personal choice. It has become a moral obligation. Someone who does not take care of their body is no longer seen as simply living the way they want. They are seen as failing. As not trying hard enough. As wasting the privilege of knowing better.

Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

There is more than humor in that line. There is an uncomfortable truth. What troubles us is not death itself, but the experience of passing through it. Not the abstract fact of an ending, but the process. And underneath that, not only that final moment, but everything leading up to it: the constant vigilance, the daily management of a body we feel could fail at any time.

The body has always held a central place in culture. First, it was about appearance: beauty as social capital, the body as a sign of status or virtue. Then came maintenance: the gym, the diet, the physique as the product of discipline and effort. Now another layer has been added—deeper and more demanding: prevention. The body is no longer just something to be seen. It is something to be managed in anticipation of a future that may stretch decades beyond what any previous generation had to plan for.

Living longer, yes. But doing so with vitality, autonomy, and clarity. Without visible decline. Without dependency. Without letting the passage of time show too much. Longevity has become both an aesthetic and an ethic. And the line between the two keeps getting thinner.

Those who resist aging too aggressively—with extreme routines, cosmetic interventions, a carefully preserved image—are judged for excess. Those who stop “keeping themselves up” according to prevailing standards are judged for falling short. As if aging were still a territory where every position is suspect. A space where it is never entirely clear what is acceptable, but always clear that something is wrong.

For a long time, that pressure fell almost entirely on women. The female body has historically been the most scrutinized, the most commented on, the most exposed to the judgment of time. But that, too, is changing. The increasing visibility of the aging male body—in public life, in the media, on social platforms—has made aging a closely watched issue for men as well. In every case, the body has stopped being a place to live in and become something to optimize.

And that is where exhaustion begins. Not the physical fatigue of someone who trained hard or slept badly. Another kind of exhaustion—more diffuse, harder to name. The exhaustion of always paying attention. Of planning, measuring, adjusting, reviewing. Of knowing that any pause might mean falling behind. Of applying the logic of performance to the one space that should have remained beyond its reach: the body itself.

In a culture where wellness has become an industry, where health metrics are shared online like career achievements, where an entire vocabulary exists to quantify the body’s condition, caring for yourself and monitoring yourself have become almost impossible to separate. And when that happens, care loses its original meaning. It stops being a gesture toward oneself and becomes a demand imposed from outside.

Gilgamesh returned home without the plant of immortality. According to the poem, that was when he found something better: the understanding that life has value precisely because it ends. That the elixir, had he obtained it, would also have been a form of emptiness.

This is not about giving up on self-care. It is about reclaiming its meaning. About being able to care for yourself without constantly policing yourself. About being well without having to prove it. About being able to stop for one day without feeling that you are failing.

“Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many” Mark Twain, the nineteenth-century American writer and humorist, once said.

He was right. But the line does not quite go far enough. Because living longer also means living with a demand we do not always know how to carry: the demand to do it better. To be healthier, more aware, more disciplined.

As if extra time necessarily required a more optimized version of ourselves.

And that is where the trap lies. Because living longer is not always the same as living better. Sometimes it means living more watchfully. More pressured. More supervised.

So perhaps the real challenge is not extending life but learning how to inhabit it without turning it into a never-ending self-improvement project. Not doing everything perfectly but making life livable. Not optimizing every day but being able to live inside it without feeling that something is always missing.

Because the real elixir was never about stopping time. It was about remaining fully inside life without having to prove, at every moment, that you are doing it right.