What is a Hobby?
A Hobby is a regular non-occupational activity done during leisure time for relaxation and pleasure.
Hobbies are a kind of pastime for really busy and active men. Men whose days are packed with work and thought need some respite. They find out some kind of engagement that they love to indulge. This gives them a mental and physical holiday. At the same time it satisfies their passion.
Hobbies can be of any kind such as stamp collection, coin collection, and collection of vintage goods, collection of portraits of world’s firsts and even lizard collection. But the joy consists not in mere collection.
Hobby is backed by an active and searching mind and intelligence. The philatelist looks for stamps of the rarest nations and the numismatist would cover miles to obtain a coin of the remotest past. Sometimes even the national archives contact such hobby riders to get evidence of some rare ancient coin.
Importance of Hobbies
Hobbies are a healthy pastime. It becomes a deep-seated passion to persons without straining their nerves. It combines the joy of discovery with the labor of acquisition. It is gifted with a feeling of achievement.
Men get a new kind of pleasure in pursuing their hobbies.
It temporarily diverts their mind from their work which is normally tense and very exacting.
Naturally they get a new kind of joy and perceive a new kind of beauty in their hobbies.
Hobbies sometimes become highly engrossing activity. It sometimes reveals those aspects of a great personality that are little thought of. One can hardly dream about Churchill, that a man who led England to victory in the last World War could also be a painter of such caliber.
Thus hobbies release the mind from the tension that affects the really busy men.
The work-a-day world is generally drab and colorless. Human mind and senses become dull in its monotony. Naturally it seeks an outlet. Fishing is a passionate hobby with some, with others reading fiction or crime or jungle stories.
Fishing for a profession is a serious pursuit. He feels dejected if he draws blank in his trade. But for an amateur it is a hobby, a sport. Winning or losing is immaterial.
Conclusion
Thus hobbies are a healthy thing and contribute a lot to the building of one’s ‘personality. It ought to be encouraged. It is far different from card-playing or drinking. These are unhealthy as they adversely affect us. Hobbies encourage the mind and thinking faculty.