The Things We Care ABout Require Higher Maintenance

​I went to the dentist yesterday. I go once a quarter to get my teeth cleaned. Seems my mouth is really good at producing tartar - like Olympic-level good - so the healthiest way to stay on top of it is frequent maintenance.

It's a bit ironic. In my younger years (which only recently concluded, thank you very much), my dental visits were rare. So rare that each appointment required formal reintroductions. You’d be surprised how much you forget about one another over a five (or ten) year hiatus.

I'd leave those visits, no cavities or damage done, and proudly proclaim once again: "I have low-maintenance teeth."

But yesterday, as the dental assistant worked away in my mouth with a small arsenal of power tools, she said something that stuck: “I know it’s a pain in the butt, and probably more expensive than you’d like, but I think these more frequent visits are really helping you take good care of your teeth.”

Now, my half-awake, "why am I here at 8 a.m." brain was tempted to write her off: “Right. I’m sure you say that to everyone while sandblasting their gums.” But on the drive home, I started to think about it—reasonably.

Well, at least a little MORE reasonably.

I began to wonder, maybe “high-maintenance” isn’t the character flaw I’ve always made it out to be. Maybe it just means something matters enough to maintain.

Maybe maintenance is love in disguise.

Yes, I’m talking about teeth. And health. And maybe even our cars and our lawns. But I'm also thinking about relationships.

There's a frequent proclamation in the dating world: "I'm low-maintenance."

There's an equally frequent demand: "I'm looking for someone "low-maintenance."

Maybe that is where relationships start to fall apart. Not just dating relationships, but families and friendships and even professional relationships. Maybe they unravel when we treat them like we treated our teeth in our twenties. Like they don’t need tending unless there’s visible damage.

Like we can go years between visits and still expect everything to be healthy.

Maybe they start to fall apart when we grow to think we have "low-maintenance" relationships.

The truth?

Showing up can be hard. More frequent connection can feel awkward. Vulnerable. Some of us never learned how to show up at all.

But one thing I’ve learned from these quarterly dentist visits, each trip gets easier, each time showing up teaches me something new about the value of showing up.

Showing up is both emotional and skillful.

So maybe showing up doesn’t start with wanting to or even knowing how to. Maybe it starts with first realizing we need to. It starts not by asking if this is going to be "high-maintenance", but rather, do I care enough about this to maintain it?

Very little in life is as low-maintenance as we want it to be.

Especially the things we care about most.