The paradox of the scales of human experience

From time to time, usually at a point of reflection I am quietly amazed by the extremes of space and time that comprise different people's worlds.
I'm sitting at the Wellington St bus station in central Perth and gazing across the vacant train tracks to the backside of Northbridge (Perth's night district). It is a barren and bleak view, one of many where Perth shows a complete void of aesthetic value. The buildings are all square and blank blocks - not just the backs of the single-story Northbridge cafe block but also buildings that in other cities would be interesting features (the State Library, the new drama centre).
From here, a stranger would have to take it on faith that Northbridge holds bright lights and good times. Indeed, I have just come from there, browsing shops to kill time. And in one of those shops, which has been there for as long as I've lived in Perth, I had a touch of the other sense - a small feature, such as a ventilation grate or a small built in shelf - and could imagine touching it much as I might have 30 years ago while also killing time. Suddenly the wide open sparse cityscape contracts to a long time connection to a repeated moment.
And I think to myself that all cities are full of these anonymous (and let's face it, unimportant) rendezvous points.
I make a lousy tourist I think. I care little for the great vistas and famous landmarks that people travel the world to photograph themselves in front of.
Instead when I travel I find myself wondering about all the little spaces that exist where ever I go. And I wonder which of them have no meaning and which are the home of someone's perspective.
In the same way that a data analyst learns to ignore obvious numbers and seek meaning in the mass of the mundane, so I look for notable ordinary things where ever I go.
When you visit a place it is often hard to know which features are historic and which were only put in place last week.
When my bus goes through the retirement settlements, sometimes the passengers have struggled to reach the bus and struggle to get on board. For them, time and space have contracted to the stage where walking - at all - and making one visit to the shops is a major event. Elsewhere on the planet some guy is preparing to trek solo to the South Pole - a major event that he has planned for years, sold his assets to fund and which his entire life will revolve around. Are these experiences equivalent. I think so. I think all earnest human endeavours that don't harm others are worthy.
It's possible that neither of these people could get through a performance of Tristan und Isolde.
The concept of human achievement is a paradox. How can it be that one person's time wasted is another's great achievement?