Nicholas Higgins 08/05/2020
On Hobbies
Don’t sacrifice your hobbies on the worldly altar of wealth, status and prestige. Be like man, not cog.
If government quarantine measures have taught us one thing, then it is the value of the hobby. This should be a glaring opportunity to pursue those indoor idle pleasures we could never get round to. Still, I’d not be the first to say that I’ve been left puzzled with so much time on my hands. What to do with myself now?
Scroll through social media and witness the many lamentations of being ‘bored’ stiff. 55 million hashtags on Instagram alone. I’ve felt angry at my sluggish dormancy, binge watching Netflix during the recent quarantine. Then it dawned on me that Pre- Covid, this is all I’d been doing anyway. The sad routine is all too familiar, get home at 6pm, crack open a bottle of red, put your feet up and stare into a box for a good couple hours.
Isolation makes you painfully aware of this way of life. Now, I’m all too conscious that the ‘life’ in my work-life balance, never constituted anything more than Instagram, Netflix and weekend binge drinking. I’ve been unashamedly exposed as a ‘hobby-less’ man. Like my peers, Pre-Covid, the usual defences were rolled out. We had ‘no time’ for hobbies as we juggled our ever-growing list of work, family and social commitments. Quarantine has exposed this lie. The root of the problem lay not in want of time, but in want of interest.
My brother is a good example of someone who’s put a good two fingers up to this attitude. Having so much time to fill, he’s taken up gardening, leather tooling and home brewing. It is done not because he has to, for his résumé, or for an online profile, but for its own sake. On its own it is gratifying. Yet such has been the rise of social media, he’s been encouraged to market his produce to millions of online customers. That way he could ‘make a name for himself’. Austin Kleon has pointed out the pitfall:
‘The minute anybody shows any talent for anything, we suggest that turn it into a profession. This is our best compliment: telling somebody they’re so good at what they love to do they could make money at it. We use to have hobbies. Now, we have side- hustles’.
So my brother is an encouragement not just to take up a hobby, but to do it for its own sake. He digs, tools and brews, just for the hell of it. This is not to deride anyone who has made a hobby profitable. Rather, it is to say that we should measure activities by meaning and not metric. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s words could well be my brothers:
‘Oh how thankful I am that my heart can fill the simple, harmless joys of the man who brings to the table a head of cabbage he has grown himself, and in a single moment enjoys not only the vegetable but all the fine days and fresh mornings since he planted it, the mild evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure of watching it grow’.
This is the antithesis of today’s culture that valorizes the metric. The number of likes on Instagram determines the value of taking a photo, downloads determine the value of recording a podcast, views determine the value of YouTube videos. Rejecting this relentless competition, I can’t help but feel that my brother is a healthier and more well rounded person because of it. He experiences everyday, the carefree joy that a good hobby can bring.
Even University is widely viewed amongst students as a tedious stepping-stone for a well-paid job in London. No, heaven forbid reading English Literature or studying History because you love it. Do it because it will get you a salary high enough to afford that new watch or car when you graduate. The reality is that we all follow the same pre-determined path, destined to work as soulless cogs for the corporate machine.
Society tells says that career should have mastery over our lives. We are told to hone in on ‘our passion’ and make it pay, whatever that enigmatic passion may be? Career is not so much the issue, bills need to be paid, and bread put on the table. It is the extent to which we worship it like a golden calf, ever grasping at the dangling carrot of more promotion and more dollars. We fixate on it to the degree that we exclude our hobbies. Or worse, we are discouraged from trying new and different pastimes. Our curiosity for idle pleasure is stifled.
This is a pyrrhic victory. What we gain by abandoning hobbies surely does not warrant the sacrifice? My brother’s friends are bewildered that he labours over something to no monetary or professional gain. Isn’t this a frivolous waste of time that won’t get you girls or a job? In fact, there is good evidence to say that having a hobby boosts your productivity in the workplace. Those who have a hobby are less stressed, and have far lower blood pressure and cortisol levels than their burnt out equivalents.
Also consider how a hobby, especially of the craft variation, can be deeply cognitive. In leather tooling, you’re confronted with coming up with a new design on a blank canvas, then you must master your new tools. Only then can you translate your design into a well-crafted leather belt. Contrary to public opinion that blue-collar work is for the thoughtless prole, here creativity, circumspection and adaptability are all utilised. Hobbies like these are fertile ground for a productive white-collar workforce.
Craft-hobbies embrace struggle. Instant gratification? Certainly not. Sexy? Hell no. Lots of head scratching and frustration? Absolutely. To get a vegetable out of soil requires much sweat from your brow. Getting a beer from your home brew kit, necessitates many frustrating hours navigating a cryptic manual. Yet what good achievement ever came without a healthy dose of adversity? Do calm seas make for good sailors? Craft hobbies see benefit in the trial. There is an eventual mastery to be aimed for.
Moreover, in each case my brother is rewarded with a real accomplishment. A shabby leather belt, freshly grown tomatoes and a warm sturdy ale. He is proud of his concrete, tangible creations. He has become an independent creator and not a passive consumer. In so doing he’s experienced the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves. Depending on himself, he’s grown confidence in his own abilities and creativity.
His creations are also deeply personal. Just like Goethe’s cabbage, that shabby leather belt means so much more than the sum of its parts. As Alexandre Kojeve writes, when my brother views his product in the world:
‘He recognises himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself’.
With all its imperfections, the belt, like all true art, is a mirror of his mind. A reflection of his view on the world.
The craft hobby, then, means much more than boosting work productivity for your 9-5, or just filling empty quarantine hours. It is to engage in truly soul enriching activity, valuable in and of itself. It is to celebrate the simple pleasures in life, and treat with good scepticism the promises of western capitalism. It is to protest against consumerism, where we don’t make or fix, but throw away and buy. It rebels against the deadening abstraction of post-industrial computer work. Instead, we become creative agents with real life, non-virtual achievements. It is the natural home for anyone who strives to live by his own powers. It is the stoic ideal.
Now where is my spade...