Virtuousness is assigned to activities and pursuits that, in that context, to the non-virtuous may seem inconsequential, or worse than the "real thing", or a wa

Virtuousness is assigned to activities and pursuits that, in that context, to the non-virtuous may seem inconsequential, or worse than the "real thing", or a waste of time. Virtuousness is assigned, say, to reading, "she's a great reader," or cooking at home, "she makes such homely meals," while living one's life or going to a restaurant or bar instead of grocery shopping and peeling potatoes and cooking for hours is seen as plebeian. "She likes to drink diet coke" does not carry the same weight as "she likes to drink tea," where the former suggests an impoverished mind and the latter a certain philosophical attitude toward life. Or "she likes to walk everywhere" compared to "she likes to drive everywhere," where walking is "imbued with a vast significance, an aura of virtue," whether in the city, mountains, or woods (but especially in the mountains or woods). "She keeps a diary" sounds profound, but shallower when the diary is digital than when the paper smells of lavender and evokes flowering hills as far as the eye can see. I like to travel to certain places and at certain times, which makes me a "conditional traveler", and very often I travel alone, which often allows me to get to know the local people and to lose myself, for a few days or weeks, in another world, perhaps in another life. Other people like other ways of traveling, which I may find more or less appealing to myself, but it's the same feeling I get from clothes worn by others: I may not like them on me, but I don't have to wear them.