The Role of Hobbies in Our Lives

The Role of Hobbies in Our Lives

I will define hobby for the purposes of this musing as something we do simply because we get pleasure from doing it without any responsibility to engage in that hobby. Raising kids is a responsibility, albeit sometimes there is pleasure, even a lot of pleasure. Earning an income is a responsibility albeit sometimes we enjoy our job. 

But as tight as we try to define hobby here, it gets tricky. I could, perhaps, classify my FANAFI Fund as a hobby since it gives me as much pleasure now as anything else I do. HOWEVER, that pleasure is in good part because it frees me from any obligation to have any more direct contact with the least fortunate in our own country or on the planet. In the past this was part of my job responsibility—well I suppose not really, but the recipients of any efforts here became more like family to me. The difference is that ‘family’ kept changing from year to year—fresh faces, fresh problems, fresh solutions, fresh failures, and so on. I only fell in love once to be honest, and being single with the personal space I required also means there needed be something to fill the void of genetic ‘family’. 

Then there are hobbies that are time frame related, or hobbies which have been around for a long time, or hobbies which provided the greatest pleasure regardless of duration. Is sex a hobby? For the most part I don’t know what to do with sex from any angle at all. Maybe it just proves God has a sense of humor. Outside of forced sex or child molestation, it is hard to take sex serious. That is why so many jokes are related to sex. How many sex lives, except to the participants, are not mostly humorous or ‘pathetic’ in one way or another. While pornography is a big industry, watching the average plain people have sex with each other generates zero interest for most people. Not that much sexy about it but the couple manage anyway. Not too many erections generated imaging your parents having sex or watching the vast majority pass by while sitting in an airport. Logic and sex are not a good combination.

I guess, for me, writing my musings must be at the top of the list of hobbies. I think I have been writing musings since college days. I really don’t know anyone else who does that as a hobby. I guess I just have to be different. There are almost 500 musings on my URL, and that’s only the last ten years. 

Walking has been a hobby for a long time. Solo walking that is. It is rare for me to walk with anyone, and if anyone suggests it I invariably decline. Walking is better than theatre or movies to me. It is a chance to observe real life or real nature. It mellows me out, puts me in a very philosophical mood. The more I can understand varied aspects of life, the more contented I tend to feel. How often I am right about my conclusions is another matter and probably irrelevant. 

Some hobbies were time dependent. Like running track, playing softball in a league, playing the horses, playing card or board games, collecting maple syrup, following sport teams or particular sports, planning and developing an outdoor landscape, and of more recent years, planning out an indoor decorative atmosphere. 

Another hobby which has been consistent over the years is spending a lot of time trying to understand unique individuals. I guess diversity intrigues me. Lincoln is my all time favorite figure to study. He is endlessly interesting over endless time. Victoria Woodhull is another one that wears well over time. I guess Terrell Owens is up there, Allen Iverson, Obama, Teddy Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, Duke Snider, and others who have faded a bit in interest. Is that a hobby? I guess so. 

Are pets a hobby?  I think so. For someone who needs a lot of personal space, this does not include the absence of pets. A relationship with a pet comes with far less complexities than relationships with other people. The nature of a pet relationship is simple, genuine, and stays the same over time. I can’t ever recall wishing to ‘divorce’ myself from a pet. Human marriages only last half the time, pets really do, for the most part, remain part of us till death do us part. That seems weird. So does the fact that when I wrote about one of my earliest pets, Buff the dog, it ranks up there as one of my most popular musings. Buff would like that if he were capable of comprehending this and were not dead. 

Laughing. Is that a hobby? I laugh a lot. Not always appropriately, but for me, not too much in life has no  humor to it. Is being a recluse a hobby?  I have had many acquaintances and ‘associates’ over time but close friends is another matter. But that’s ok—Lincoln was very much that way, Terrell Owens is that way, and I follow suit. It is a tad hard for anyone to get very close to me since I seldom attend social events, don’t participate in gift exchanges, or twitter, or attend special occasions in other’s lives, or hang with others a lot. One of the guards in the Condo where I live commented to me that “you are the friendliest person in the building with the most people, but always from a safe distance.”I never go to the Board meetings, rarely attend any parties, or restaurant excursions, or celebrate holidays with others. A holiday for me is a chance to get out of everyone’s way and enjoy the solitude of my own place and thoughts.  I much prefer to stay out of everyone’s way and just relax with a carefully prepared meal of my favorite foods, and just listen to music, write a musing, maybe watch a netflix movie, and let my mind wander wherever it tends to wander. I absolutely refuse to spend any holiday chatting with other people’s relatives whom I will seldom or never see again. That is real agony to me, and to me a total waste of time. Holidays are family days and I have no immediate family. Are all these hobbies?  I guess so. 

One of my most rewarding hobbies is my almost daily watching a DVD lecture from The Great Courses. These Professors are the most knowledgeable and engaging lecturers to be found in the U.S. I just ordered some more but I already have a DVD library of 2,136 lectures in 80 courses. There I can be found most evenings glued to the TV learning something new even though in a relatively short number of years I will cease to exist. That is almost like having another college degree with a major in whatever.

Is constantly googling a hobby?  Probably so. Years ago I would have to spend a half day at a library to track down a stat. Now stats can be obtained at the push of a button. We can all be much more informed now on any topic if we so wish. 

I read a lot. When I moved to a condo I threw out around 1200 books and am forced to get rid of several hundred books a year. I also get a half dozen monthly medical news letters from major medical institutions. My favorite is Mayo Clinic. They share their knowledge far more than any other major medical center. They also have the best approach. They will give you an appointment day and time, but when you can go back home depends on the nature of the problem and how many different specialties end up involved.  A patient does not meet with one doctor and then another in many cases, but all doctors from disciplines that might have a bearing on the problem meet with the patient at one time, tests are run as required one after the other until a final consensus is obtained. 

Are phone conversations a hobby?  There are a few people I often converse with on the phone for an extended length of time. I guess that’s a hobby or in my case a good part of my social life if I can use the term loosely. 

This didn’t turn out as I expected. In my case I guess I have a zillion hobbies and retirement is nothing more than fully engaging myself in all these hobbies. I reckon many people might wonder “What does Reid do all day?”  I suspect it is difficult for many to imagine how one is doing anything if others are not involved. In my productive years most of my hours were involved with others as it was the nature of my job, but once retirement hit, others were out of the equation. Excitement is almost an annoyance these days. Contentment reigns in my retirement years, and I have been retired now for 20 years. Not really believing in a Heaven thereafter, retirement suffices for my Heavenly years. 

I suspect people with families have less hobbies than I do, they are busy sharing experiences with family. Some families do practically everything together and some families rarely do that much together apart from meeting obligations to their children. Maybe if one has family, too many individual hobbies is selfish. 

Some hobbies are unethical in that while they may bring pleasure, others are negatively affected by the hobby. Gambling may be a hobby, but if it denies economic stability to a family it is unethical. Sex may be a hobby, but if it breaks marital vows and is not an open marriage, then that kind of sex is unethical. Some ‘experts’ claim having sex outside of marriage can save the marriage (like maybe one spouse doesn’t care for sex too much, i.e Jack and Jackie Kennedy). 

A lot of marriages seem to break up when the hobbies of each spouse start to diverge. Most people gravitate to particular hobbies at particular ages. It is probably more remarkable that so many marriages last, given the vast number of different paths we can take over our lifetime. With marriages becoming less frequent and lasting less time, it does make one wonder whether marriage as the current institution for spousal arrangement will not be drastically different in the future. It already is for a rapidly increasing number of couples. Coupling has become very couple self created in nature. 

Even raising children in the future may change. Instead of having the perfect mother and father maybe it will be the best computer disk program that will play the major role. Then, when some method doesn’t work I guess a parent just changes the computer program. We already have ‘Dear Abby’ and other such advice columns which aid others to find answers to their personal problems. Maybe an 8 year old kid will be able to go on his computer and tell the computer what is on his mind. Will it become the computer which ’knows best’ and not necessarily mom and dad? The rate of change in human lives and societies is certainly in high gear—so much so that we need hang on to our hat. 

If I counted correctly I have at least 11 hobbies. This is probably overkill in the sense I can never find enough time to spend on 11 hobbies. However, the significance here is that all these things I do can be done without the need of others to amuse me in the process. I reckon there are many people with such a strong need for social interaction that they can’t be happy on their own. There are downsides to being a loner, but when it comes to the terminational years, to be able to amuse ourselves sure makes these years far more enjoyable to both ourselves and others we might otherwise be pestering for attention. 

For some reason the word tiddlywinks jumped into my mind. So I googled to see what the hell tiddlywinks actually was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pdglP7J8Y  Well, I don’t think I will adopt tiddylwinks as a hobby.  According to the World Sports Encyclopedia (2003), there are 8,000 ...games. Wow. 

I reckon we all need our hobbies to maximize our contentment. Since we all have different genetics and environments, hobbies will be all over the place. Perhaps people who are work-a-holics don’t have time for hobbies, but then maybe they pay a price for this. What is more evident is that everyone needs to develop the insight to know when enough is enough of just about anything in life. When a hobby becomes compulsive, our contentedness diminishes.  I always remember the old Ferlin Husky song, “When I have learned enough to really live, I am old enough to die”. That’s a tad scary. We know the routine——TIME stays, WE GO. At some point we probably should just say goodbye instead of hello to everyone we meet. I think proper etiquette is to always say goodbye when we leave. 

Goodbye!  There, I can check that off my list of to-do’s. Hold the party balloons, just have them on hand. I plan a huge funeral. Half of the crowd will be there since if you give the people what they want, they will come in droves. The other half will come just to make sure I am dead. Fair enough.  Actually, I plan no funeral. What’s the point of being the center of attention if we are not even there? I am not big on attending funerals. If I currently am active with the whole family I will attend to support the surviving family. Otherwise I am realistic enough to understand my presence will do very little for anyone and distance is often rather far. I am  much more likely to attend a memorial service in which those who knew the deceased speak instead of some clergy person who babbles away a canned eulogy. Plus a memorial service often gives one time to plan ahead. I also prefer to remember the person as I once knew them, not have a mental image of them in a casket. Finally, it just seems odd to be in a group after the funeral and it becomes essentially another social event. I realize there is nothing really wrong with this but I feel strange partying away right after a funeral service. Maybe it is the nature of my hermit-like personality but I prefer to grieve the loss by myself. The loss is kind of permanent and sad and takes a toll on our own life. We don’t suddenly die, we die a death more often of a thousand cuts. Father Time is a stalker.