Doing something else

How do we evaluate our time. Is every minute precious. Should we quantify our time by the activity we undertake.

A left over concept from Victorian times was that of the evil of sloth, activity trumped inactivity, that the ethos of our being on earth should be your productivity.

Is it more important to read about cycling a bicycle or getting out on one. 

I would hazard a guess that the overwhelming majority would say the latter.

Most activities are better for our well being by active participation. The caveat to that is, how much of your natural resource is spent in attaining that goal and vitally, it depends on so many other factors, such as the work you do and your age. 

If reading about an activity is second best how second is it. 

Naturally for the older person it might be impossible to be active or they might just be revisiting  old pastures but for the person tied up travelling in a lorry all hours godsend or the marketing executive cooped up in an airplane visiting clients across the globe, there is not much they can do outside the job spec.

What I am addressing is something different. It's the value we internalise from within our concept of what we see and hear around us regarding the value "others" would put on an "activity" irrespective of what the activity was about.

The university don who spends all his time in his study reading his musty books is looked on as being strange and unworldly. The busy person engaged in charity work is valued as an important part of society.

The corollary therefore is, if you read a lot and don't engage in much else, you are of less worth. This judgement is made not only by society but by the participant as well since as they seek to justify their inactivity for a good book they also struggle to rationalise their time spent reading against those hundred and one things "others" find important.

"Mundanity " is a category, or a value of a person by a society which thrives on the "mundane". 

 The inability to find enough sustenance from reading descriptions of what others have uncovered or experienced is a phenomena specific to a Helter Skelter, short-termist mindset which has little space or interest in events outside their own sphere of consciousness.

But It doesn't make it any easier to try to rid ones self of the thought as you settle down to a good read or write that you should be doing something else!