Kate Braid, the author of "A Plea for the Physical", feels that she is alive when she does physical activities. She works in construction sites and experiences dangers, but she feels excited rather than tired or frightened. She criticizes people who are lazy in moving their bodies and avoiding "dirty" jobs, which are actually helpful for them. However, my opinion is different from hers, and I think it is because Braid and I are from different generations. She is now an old lady who was born in 1940's, and I am only a teenager who is more used to sedentary life than physical life.
Unlike Braid's statement about books and computers, I think it is opposite instead. Researching through books is time-consuming. Going to the library, looking for books that have information people need, and reading them take too much time. On the contrary, people can find information online in much shorter time. Last year in Social Studies class, I was supposed to research about Gabriel Dumont's life, and my teacher recommended reading books about him. After I spent a week reading them, I went online for more information and found the same information and more in thirty minutes. The process of "smelling ink and holding thick books" was waste of time. Computers, if used correctly, are much more efficient.
Compared to students from previous generation, today's students are required to spend more time indoors studying. To them, therefore, sedentary lives are not considered to be "torture" and physical lives "liberation". This is totally a matter of people's viewpoints. Students can feel they are free and alive when watching TV or chatting online. They can also feel shovelling snow or exercising is torture.
I think Braid's opinion that being sedentary is torture and being physical liberation is too extreme and subjective. From her point of view, young people are lazy because they do not move their bodies, and they are pitiful because they do not know how to enjoy strenuous work. However, people including me are working as hard as her generation did, just with the difference in how. Now, I am writing an essay by typing, not by "feeling pencils smoothly moving on and erasing with an eraser", but I feel I am alive and free.
