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The Delights of Loafing Around as a Hobby
By Robert Paterson
When I was young (and I'm talking about when I was about seven), if there was one thing I wanted above all, it was to have a HOBBY. All my friends (it seemed at the time) had a hobby, and they all seemed to pursue that hobby with the same kind of single minded devotion and dedication. There were pigeon fanciers, there were people into fishing, there were karate experts, there were stamp collectors, there were ballerinas. You name it, there was that! Can you imagine what that was like? For a child, I mean. The thought of one day having to admit that, no, well I don't actually have a hobby really. What! You don't have a hobby! What is the matter with you? So no, it was not something you could readily admit, that you didn't have a hobby at all. Not in our neighbourhood, anyway. So I lied and dissembled for a while until it became apparent that, sooner rather than later, I was going to have to find a hobby of some description. The problem was, I wasn't really all that interested in anything. Or at least, I wasn't all that interested in anything TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL ELSE that I would even contemplate doing it in all my spare moments. Actually, there was something I was interested in, and that was loafing around and looking up at the sky while lying next to the small gurgling stream that ran near our house. Just down the lane on the way towards the woods. (Yes, I was quite a strange child.) But this activity, pleasant though it undoubtedly was, did not really achieve very much. Achievement, it became clear, was what hobbies were really all about. You had to achieve something or what was the point? Well, I did try. Many of the hobbies I tried to take up were under the influence of friends and acquaintances who somehow managed to convince me that their activity was the one true Holy Grail that would transform me from the aimless individual I was, into a stern jawed and upright member of society, able to hold my head up in any company, displaying my wondrous achievements to the world. I actually tried all of the activities mentioned above, and also a few more, but none of them came to anything. So now that I am older, I still have no hobby I can call my own. But I have achieved a level of satisfaction with this situation. Because I now understand that it is useless to try to pretend to be are something you are not - or to pretend you enjoy having a hobby when you do not. Do what you enjoy doing, and if what you enjoy is loafing around, then so be it, do that to the best of your ability, pursue it with every fibre of your being. Now that I'm free of that neighbourhood where I spent my childhood years, I have discovered that there is much expert opinion in favour of just loafing around as an activity; for example, it is said to be useful for dissipating stress. So there you are, maybe I was right all the time, but I just didn't know it. I'm still not quite bold enough to put "loafing around" under Interests and Activities on my resume yet, though. |
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