Some people like collecting bottlecaps, some people like rock climbing, others like pottery or oil painting. If we don’t make our living doing these things (which most bottle cap collectors do not), then we call these activities “hobbies.”
But what is the value of a hobby, and why does almost everyone seem to have a few? It seems like such a potentially rich part of the human experience, so we might as well understand it and aim to get the most out of our non-professional endeavors.
What a Hobby is About-
Before going any further, lets take a look at what a hobby is (thank you dictionary.com):
Hobby, n: An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
By this definition (one that I think most people would agree with), hobbies are basically fun little things we do when we’re not working – mostly because we enjoy doing them.
This enjoyment probably comes from a million different sources for a million different people. Some people play golf because they enjoy the sense of calm that comes when they are out in nature. Some people climb rocks because they’ve always been fascinated with climbing and its something they get a certain rush from. Some people collect butterflies because they like to marvel at the beauty of such a unique and colorful creature.
These activities provide people with variety in their daily experience, sometimes with a creative outlet, sometimes with a physical challenge, etc…
We “get into” these fun little outlets and we make them a part of our lives.
I think its admirable to be engaged in our own lives and our own fun, but I would also still ask the question “what else could you be doing?” or “is this what is best for you now?” to many people involved in hobbies, myself included.
Do I consider hobbies to be evil? Do I want to tell people to stop any practice of hobbies and just work at their regular job all day long? No, not at all.
I just happen to think that often times, a person’s hobby might not be driving them in the directions that are most important in their lives.
Are Most Hobbies Just Wasting Time?-
Maybe this is a bit of a harsh way to put it. I’m not trying to stir anger and outrage in the internet community.
Lets make it clear that I don’t consider myself to be the exception to this tendency to not remain aligned with what is actually most important to us in our lives. Its just an idea to bounce out there, see if it resonates with you.
A point to consider is that our hobbies might not be bringing us towards the ideals of what we want to experience, what we want to accomplish, and who we want to become.
The obvious example might be the man struggling to support his family who has a golf hobby. He might want to reconsider spending that kind of cash on the green, and invest those hours in finding a higher paying job or picking up some side work. Assuming he values supporting his family over playing golf as a hobby (which isn’t necessarily the case, but in this example lets assume it is) – he’d better reconsider how he allocates his time, energy, and money.
I’m not only talking about cases where someone’s hobby is blatantly going against something more important to them, I’m talking about even the most subtle and seemingly innocent cases.
Lets take the example of a college student who happens to have a hobby of playing video games.
If you were to ask this college student what was most important to him in his life, “video games” would likely not make the list (it might, but in this example lets assume it does not). He might include things like: fun, meeting people, living a long and healthy life, contributing to his community, and revitalizing the environment.
While playing video games, one might ask him how playing video games is aiding him in developing those things which are most important to him in his life.
Or you could tell him to write 2 pages about his ideal future scenario of where he wants to be in 5 years. He might go into detail on the types of relationships he would have with people he cared about, he might go into the kind of house he would own and the exciting job he would be involved in.
While playing video games, one might ask him how playing video games is aiding him in creating that ideal future that he drew out so enthusiastically.
In either case he would probably tell you to lay off, stating that video games are just for fun, just to relax, and that everyone needs fun and relaxation in their lives.
Here’s where I think it gets good. Just me personally, but I like this part.
Aligning Ourselves with Purpose-
I think that most if not all people do need some form of relaxation and fun in our lives. I might ask, however, if there are other potential activities that could serve the same purpose of having a fun and relaxing effect on us, while at the same time orient us towards our highest goals.
The general principal might look like this:
For any activity that fulfills any need, determine if that need could be fulfilled by another activity which might further our highest objectives in life.
Boom. There it is. Lets look at how this idea might be applied:
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Example 1: In the example with the college student looking for fun and relaxation, he might drop the video games and instead go play basketball with friends, or get involved in some environmental causes, or do some internet research on careers in his field, or go play pool in one of the dorms.
Any of those other activities listed could not only be fun and relaxing, but would also involve other things that student actually values in his life (IE: environmental causes, living healthy, meeting people, etc…). In this way, he is orienting himself towards that which he actually wants in his life, towards the future he desires.
Example 2: A man in his 50s is an avid chess player. He enjoys the fun and the challenge of chess, and he also likes being able to play with other people and meet friends. Let us assume that this man claims that his family is the highest priority in his life above all else, and that his other main objective in life is to innovate in his field of electrical engineering.
He might be able to switch his activities and find challenge in helping his children to better in school, or rekindling the fire of passion in his marriage. He might find fun in engaging his kids in new activities and encouraging their development. He might also find challenge and fun in new experiments and projects in his field of science.
The point is here, if chess doesn’t hold value by itself, and if family and engineering innovation are his highest objectives in life, then why doesn’t he allocate his energy and time towards enriching his family relationships and actually making progress on experiments in his field? If those are the things he actually does value most, then there seems to be not value not to.
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Am I saying that chess is a bad thing, or that videos games are a bad thing? Of course not, but I am saying that nothing is exempt from potential scrutiny in terms of aligning our lives with what we actually want to do with them in the first place – to what is genuinely most important to us.
It might very well be that for the older man, chess holds a value and an importance that cannot be filled by other activities. It might be that for the young student, video games hold a unique kind of fun and relaxation effect that actually charges him up and makes him ideally effective in achieving what he most wants to achieve and becoming who he most wants to become.
If they were to make that distinction for themselves, I wouldn’t question their actions.
However, I would probably ask them to look inside themselves and determine if those activities at those times were genuinely what they deemed best for themselves.
This doesn’t just go for hobbies, though, this kind of introspection, self understanding and prioritizing can (and occasionally should?) be done with any action or decision.
This brings us to the last segment…
What it Breaks Down to:
Now we’ve gone beyond the isolated occurrences of “hobbies” and onto the bigger picture of living on our own best terms.
Participation in hobbies, like any other action or decision, can be referred to against the reality of what is actually most important to that individual at that time in that situation.
The breakdown looks like this:
Given what you value in your life, given what you want to accomplish, experience, and become, and given where you want to be in 1, 2, 5, 10, 80 years, is what you’re doing right now the ideal action?
Now, if the above question was posed to someone and they could honestly say “yes,” then they are either neglecting the complexity of the question and blatantly placating themselves, or they are genuinely living with a greater degree of conscious involvement and depth than 99% of the population on the planet.
For instance, the chess playing man might genuinely believe that helping his children study could make them reliant on his help, and that he can only focus on innovation in engineering for so long at a time, so there are times when chess as an activity is genuinely best for him given what he values and wants to achieve – then more power to him – he seems to be living life “on purpose” and is consciously following through on what actually matters to him.
Of course we can know very little about what is “objectively” the best decision for us given our values and goals, so we can never do more than make our best intelligent determination of what our best decision is – but it seems to make sense to have a criterion to reference in making such a distinction.
Lets not forget that we have a massive capacity to deceive ourselves, and we will tend to rationalize and avoid change. However, if we at least set our compass we won’t be able to help getting closer to alignment with our highest values day by day.
…
We’re alive for how long?
What are we doing with this time?
What matters to us?
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