The Body Keeps Score: Why I Treat Mobility Like a Balance Sheet

I got an email the other day from WebMD. They addressed me as "Dr. Khela."

I stared at it for a moment longer than I probably should have. Not out of pride — more out of that quiet irritation that comes when something small reveals something bigger. I completed a Doctor of Pharmacy. I earned that credential through years of work I'm genuinely proud of. But I've never once introduced myself as Dr. Khela. Not in the pharmacy, not in conversation, not on my website. Because I know what people picture when they hear "doctor," and it isn't a pharmacist. It's a physician. To use that title casually, in public spaces, feels like borrowing credibility I didn't quite earn in the way the word implies.

I bring this up not to lecture anyone about titles — but because it points to something I've been thinking about a lot lately. The gap between how things appear and how things actually are.

That gap shows up everywhere. In credentials. In businesses. And maybe most honestly, in our bodies.

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Let me tell you where I actually notice it most.

I'm in my 30s now. And I've started paying attention to a set of quiet signals that most people my age are actively ignoring. Can I touch my toes? Can I do a single-leg squat with control — not falling, not compensating, just clean movement? Can I hold my own bodyweight on my hands? Can I get off the floor without using my hands at all?

These aren't gym flex questions. I'm not trying to impress anyone. These are the questions I ask myself because I've watched what happens when people stop being able to answer yes.

When I was younger, mobility was invisible. Everyone had it. You didn't notice it because it was just there — like good WiFi or a healthy relationship. You only notice those things when they're gone.

Now I look around at people my age — smart, driven, successful people — and I watch them move. Or more accurately, I watch them not move. Stiff hips. Locked thoracic spines. The careful, deliberate way someone sits down in a low chair, like they're defusing a bomb. And these aren't elderly people. These are people in their 30s and 40s who just... stopped moving somewhere along the way and never noticed it happening.

That's the thing about decline. It doesn't announce itself. It accumulates quietly, in the years you were too busy to stretch, too tired to walk, too comfortable to challenge your body in any real way.

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I think about this a lot as a father.

There's an uncomfortable truth I've had to sit with: sedentary parents raise sedentary kids. Not because they intend to. Not because they don't love their children. But because children learn by watching, and they absorb your lifestyle before they can even articulate what a lifestyle is.

If the adults in a home spend their evenings on the couch, the children learn that's what evenings are for. If nobody in the house walks, stretches, plays, sweats — if movement isn't a visible, normal part of daily life — then the kids don't inherit an active life. They inherit your defaults.

That's a heavy thing to reckon with. Because it means the choices I make about my own body aren't just personal. They're generational.

I don't want to pass my bad habits down like heirlooms. I want to pass down the habit of moving — of treating the body as something worth maintaining, not just something you drag around until it stops cooperating.

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So I've built a small set of personal benchmarks. Nothing dramatic. No performance metrics or complicated programs. Just a few honest questions I check in with regularly.

Can I touch my toes? Can I squat on one leg? Can I move my bodyweight around with some ease and lightness? Am I light in my body — not in terms of weight, but in terms of how freely I move through the world?

These are my aging indicators. The things I monitor the way I'd monitor a business metric or a financial statement. Because the body, like a business, doesn't lie about its fundamentals. You can dress up the surface, but the underlying numbers tell the real story.

And honestly? This is the same instinct that made me uncomfortable with that WebMD email. I don't want to perform health. I don't want to carry a credential or a title that implies something I haven't actually earned in practice. I want the real thing — the actual capacity, the genuine function, the truth of how I'm doing — not just the appearance of it.

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There's a version of aging that looks fine on the outside and is quietly falling apart underneath. Decent clothes, busy calendar, impressive title. And then one day, the body submits its honest report, and it's not what you expected.

I'd rather know now. I'd rather ask the uncomfortable questions now, while I still have time to change the answers.

Mobility isn't glamorous. It doesn't trend. Nobody's posting their single-leg squat as a flex. But it's one of the most honest signals your body gives you about how you're actually doing — not how you're performing, not how you're presenting, but how you're actually doing.

And in a world full of polished surfaces and borrowed credibility, I'll take honest signals every time.