physical exercise

Here's a - I suppose you might call it a vignette - on the virtues of taking physical exercise regularly. Maybe not, actually. Memories of those "humming yoga", "yoga in general", and "yoga" things that those wannabe saints at FIITJEE tried to encourage students to engage in fill the mind with the pungent odor of chlorine. (Or that might be the cleaning liquid I used in the bathroom a couple of hours ago. How conscientious I am!) This will be more about my thoughts about physical exercise and suchlike aids to gracious living (to borrow a phrase Professor D used on all of his Calc III exams to refer to cheating). Too often we fail to realize the value of physical exercise as we contemn anything that doesn't require much thinking.

I run (intermittently nowadays, since I feel like a car wreck), and I find that it makes everything so much the clearer. It improves my mood, too. If I feel sullen and generally contemptuous of the world, I find upon returning from a run that I've magically become filled with the sort of insouciant benevolence that characterizes people like Bertie Wooster. It's useful in avoiding discord, and can motivate you to focus on work that you would otherwise put off until such a time as you wish you hadn't put it off. Physical activity of this sort shouldn't be looked down upon by intellectuals. (Especially those pious little Brahmin types whom one can find aspiring in a little corner of the classroom to great intellectual heights while being pelted with paper balls and other hard materials by the inevitable cavemen.) They ought to embrace and enjoy it, so that they don't regret not having done something to obviate their physical and mental debilities in their old age. It didn't have to be said very often to people of our parents' generation and earlier, because physical activity tended to be part of their everyday lives, even if they were appropriately studious and academic. There is, of course, the added benefit that exercise done correctly will almost certain improve one's physical appearance, assuming one is already good-looking enough for the difference to count.