In a seemingly different life I dimly recall the sage words of another.
Hobby is the intent of a (leisure) life; work is but
means to an ends: we work that we might hobby.”
— me, now
Since graduating high school I forgot how much I love my art. My writing. My reading. My fiddle. My Japanese. My photography. In the past few years it is has been a small renaissance of sorts for myself to rediscover all these things all over again. I have for now called myself Traveler, not just traveler: explorer of the world around and in myself. But I could replace Traveler with Hobbyist and might still come to the same consensus: my hobby is my life, life as art (as cliché and trite as that might seem, might actually be).
I once thought that by developing myself professionally I would make myself a content and complete individual. (Work, marriage and all things external will never make a person happy, but this is for different time.) Work is not necessarily, of course, drudgery; but, that is, at its barest, the beginning and end of it all: Work is work. Work is but a single aspect of our lives; a single dimension of a life that is infinite in its dimensions. There is a value in learning to cope in this environment, but in and of itself work is less rewarding than the Puritan-Protestant upbringing would have led me to believe. For the vast majority of us, work is a borne necessity; this I get and do not argue; but, it is with more than a mere thimble full of humility that I have learned the limitations of work and more so learned that there is far, far more to life than work.
I suspect that our hobbies are a truer determination of who we are, of what we truly value. Certainly work can and does compensate us in times when nothing more than professionalism and discipline drive us to complete the task; but, hobbies give us neither salary nor security. Hobbies are opportunities to do something for the sheer joy of it. Hobbies do not require us to consider if we are professionally competent or sufficiently skilled to be financially compensated for our work. Hobbies do not require quarterly reviews to determine our progress or our title or qualification for promotion. Hobbies do not need last longer than they are satisfying; there is no penalty for leaving them for years at a time when they no longer suit us. Hobbies give us nothing more than a deepening of ourselves; their greatest wealth, at their core, is their pursuit of ourselves through them. I heart my hobbies; I hunger my hobbies.
very true…perfect for the New Year