In Praise Of Margins

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Marginal Vitality With the stress of living in this fast paced world, we are in need of marginal things every once in a while. As Ian Frazier stated, margins are those things other people find unprofitable in this economic world. They are things that occur in the spur of the moment such as fishing just to fish even if nothing is caught, napping after a good meal, or even watching television. Although even Frazier himself enjoys a little time wasting, he knows that the “what are you doing?” question will always bother us in an undeniable way when we are caught in the act of something this society and our peers may deem as unbeneficial. “In Praise of Margins” by Ian Frazier, he talks in depth about marginal activities he and others used to do as children in the woods. He admits that now, even as they have grown up, they have continued to return to the “woods” and still enjoy those marginal activities that used to fill up their time and days as children. As children, these marginals were accepted up to a certain point by others, but as they began to age, these time wasting activities were scorned and they were looked down as idle time wasting individuals. There came a point where there had to be a good objective towards every action. He had to fish in order to catch a fish and thence catch a bigger fish and so on. Ian Frazier sees these activities as something vital in human nature. His opinion of why marginal places and activities are so important is one of which I agree with profusely. The marginal are things we simply cannot function without, such as how a page cannot function without its actual margins, fish cannot live without water, and lamps cannot function without light bulbs. These are our sort of “getaways” in which everything else seems to flow away from our minds and we are able to enjoy what to others may seem like a waste of time. It is even proven

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