Tires ( 轮胎, タイヤ, 타이어)

Today I got all 4 tires on my Honda Accord replaced because....it was time. 8 years, 80,000 miles, those tires had seen a lot, and maybe on some level I could feel it. A lot of things in life happen gradually without us noticing, and it just gradually makes small changes incrementally, like gaslighting or the famous boiling frog story of the temperature of boiling water gradually increasing while the frog is in it leading to negative consequences as eventually the frog will be boiled alive. I couldn't really tell if anything was seriously wrong with the tires. Eventually, I felt like my tires would grind down to such a level that they wouldn't be road worthy, or they would just burst while driving, so I decided to make a change. After getting it done, the driving felt......smoother. The car still reacted to bumps and potholes, of course, but on flat land it felt a little smoother, and on turns there wasn't as much friction. The wheels feel nice, like I'm wearing a new T-shirt that doesn't have the sweat stains or marks from various previous incidents. A lot of facets are like this, incremental changes: shoes getting worn down every time you walk around in them so that the tread wears off and you don't get the traction (this is the most analogous to tires), dust piles up in the home until it becomes a thick layer coating the whole area, battery life on Apple iPhone goes down gradually as Apple tries to get you to buy the newest model by making their older phones run out of battery faster, and the human body obviously: gradually our bodies get older and everything is less tight, we get flabby. Oh and also I have a knot in my back that formed gradually because of bad posture and not sitting up straight until one day it just became a strain no my whole body; now I feel it all the time and can't get out of it. These are all tiny little things that aren't noticeable like bananas turning ripe, but eventually they become glaring problems. Does the boiling frog metaphor work the other way though? Do certain things get incrementally better without us noticing, until one day we've just become unwittingly a huge success? Not as much, because as human beings we're quick to celebrate the happy things in our life that make us feel good, like checking my bank account (hey there's more there now this Friday! Yay!) or winning sports games, there are various scores and numbers to tell us how we are doing, and we pay attention to those like a hawk, never letting them just go on unchecked, so very few things "suprise" us after long periods of neglect. (Hey suddenly I'm married and have 3 kids!) We usually notice all the good things, except maybe the rewards points I get on credit cards and Chipotle purchases. The other day I realized I got had more than a THOUSAND Chipotle points! That must get me something good, right? Nope, 1600 points is needed for an entree, the simplest burrito. Darn. Trivia, I'm hoping, works this way, where one day I just wake up really good not realizing I've mastered all the major things to know in trivia (no one knows everything of course, it's an infinite field of knowledge). Maybe some karma points, like donating blood/platelets eventually builds up to something and we don't even know it? An immunity to chronic diseases later in life? A "free blood transfusion card" for when us blood donors actually need blood to use it when we need it? Not sure that's how it works. No, I think the positive inverse of the boiling frog analogy is probably what I mentioned, the intangible love and trust and goodwill that you "bank" time and time again without noticing you're doing so, until one day you realize you're in a loving relationship with parents, wife, child, or friend. Suddenly I've been friends with someone for 30+ years! I know everything about them. That sort of thing, you know like important stuff.