By Yo-yo
When I was growing up (I’m talking here of around half a century or so ago!), it was common for children to have one or more hobby—an activity other than something mandated by school which they did after school-hours for the sheer joy of it and on which they spent a significant amount of time on a regular basis.
As a child, I had a number of hobbies, including collecting stamps, first-day covers, coins, picture postcards, matchbox labels, ‘toothpaste charms’ (little toy animals and birds that came with a certain brand of toothpaste) and autographs of ‘famous’ people, besides reading, listening to the radio and corresponding with pen-friends from different parts of the world. I spent a good deal of my spare time (and a fair portion of my pocket-money, too) on my hobbies.
When I look back now, I can see that most of my hobbies were of a very passive sort. By this I mean that they did not entail much creative action on my part. For instance, collecting coins from different parts of the world basically involved buying them from a shop or being gifted them by someone and then putting them into a coin album or simply into a tin. It was similar with most of my other hobbies that involved mere collection of items.
Hobbies that are based on collecting things can engender passive consumption, a hoarding mentality and greed, although I did not know this then. The substantial volume and variety of the different things I collected as hobbies may have given me great delight then, but it did not entail much effort on my part beyond simply collecting them. Through these hobbies, I was not creating anything new myself. I was only accumulating things that others had made. These hobbies did not involve substantial development of any creative abilities on my part. They did not require much creative use of the mind, body and emotions (At the same time, though, I must state that my ‘hoarding’ hobbies as well as my other hobbies such as reading, listening to the radio and corresponding with pen-friends from different countries did help me enhance my knowledge of the world, each in its own unique way).
If I were able to go back to being a child, I might like to choose a different range of hobbies for myself, hobbies that entail creative use of one’s entire being, including mind, body and emotions, and that help the flowering of a creative personality, the nurturing of a person who can offer something new and beautiful to themselves and to the world—hobbies like singing, playing a musical instrument, painting, acting, creative writing, tailoring, pottery, woodwork, working with plants and animals, and so on. Here I must state that when I was a child, my parents did arrange for me to be able to access some of these hobbies, but because of diffidence, indifference, laziness or lack of direction and commitment on my part, I failed to make good use of these opportunities that came my way.
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With the benefit of hindsight I can say that parents would do well to encourage their children to have one or more creative hobby and to excel in it so that through them they can derive joy, meaning and purpose from something beyond school-related activities and also learn a skill or art that they can use to become creators and contributors, rather than passive consumers. A creative hobby can help a child grow into a creative person, someone who adds to the stock of goodness in the world through their creative contributions.
Creative hobbies aren’t just something for children alone, though. Even adults can have one or more such hobbies. It is never too late to take up a creative hobby. But it is best if one starts with a creative hobby early on in life so that one can go on to excel in it over time, so much so that it can even become one’s career (in which case, one would get paid to do something that one loves doing, and then one’s job would not be mere drudgery, but, rather, the flowering of one’s inner being).
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