I am currently in Brazil. A few weeks ago, I was invited to visit some classes at an English school so that students had a change to ‘talk with a real foreigner’. With my blonde hair and being a head above everyone else I clearly was the foreigner. The students were incredibly sweet, and I really enjoyed every minute of it. As I wrote about in a previous post, this experience also made me realize something, namely how questions can become a framework within which we get to identify ourselves. The questions you ask will determine the information you get about a person and that information you will use to form an idea of a person. One of the questions they asked in particular set me thinking.
‘What is your favorite hobby?’
Throughout the years I have had many different answers to that question. At the same time, I rarely felt fully convinced by my own answer. In the last year alone, my answer would change each month. In January it was surfing, in February it was diving, in March it was hiking, in April it was writing, in May it was beach volleyball, in June it was firespinning, in July it was playing the ukulele, in August it was reading, in September it was learning languages, it is now October, and someone just taught me some chords on a guitar and now I want one. I have a new favorite hobby every month. Does that mean the previous ones are no longer hobbies of mine? No. But if someone asks me what my hobbies are, will I go on to mention each and every one of them? Usually not. So, when the students asked about my hobbies I was conflicted.
I noticed in myself that I have certain requirements in my head for when something would ‘count’ as a hobby. The two main requirements were that I spend a lot of time on it, and I am good at it or at least I am progressing consistently. I don’t know where these requirements came from, but I want to get rid of them because they are limiting me in talking about what I like to do. There are many activities that I spend a lot of time on but often only for a few weeks until I find a newer thing that I then spend a lot of time on. There are things that I am good at but there are also things that I am not good at but still like doing.
A few years ago, I heard something that I have remembered since. Although I do not remember if it was in a conversation or that I saw a video, the point was this: you know how, when someone asks about our hobbies, many of us say something like ‘I like drawing, but I am not very good at it’? Stop that. You do not have to be good at something for it to be your hobby. You simply have to enjoy doing it. Stop saying you are not good at your hobby. First of all, that is talking yourself down! That is not going to make you become any better either. Second of all, and more importantly, who cares if you are good at your hobby or not? The important thing is that you like it!
The blog Symptoms of Living has even written that it is actually a good thing when you are not great at your hobbies and gives four very good reasons for it!
To give a personal example, I stopped asking people if they are good at surfing when they say they like to surf (although admittedly, out of curiosity I do ask where they surf and with what board which usually sort of indicates what level they are). However, I realized that although I have stopped asking people whether they are good, I have not let go of the idea of having to be good at something to call it a hobby. For example, I am hesitant to say that I like surfing because I am afraid people are going to have crazy high expectations. I am even more hesitant to say I am a surfer for the same reason. Why can I not just believe that the only requirement for identifying myself with my hobby is that that I like doing it?
Maybe it helps to think about another example: painting. How many painters do you know?
The first people I start counting as an answer to that question is people that sell paintings for a living. Or at least make some money with painting somehow. Other example: how many musicians do you know? I first started mentioning famous musicians or people that have brought out official songs.
Why does my mind do that when it also believes you can call yourself a painter when painting is a hobby, that you are a musician if you like to make music. Why does my mind reduce an identity to include only that which with you can be financially productive with? Am I the only one that does this or is this a general thinking pattern embedded in a capitalist society where productivity determines your worth? – Meaning your hobby will only be taken seriously enough to identify yourself with it when it gives the economy money. Or framed in a different way: our identity only includes those aspects of ourselves that give the economy money.
I know this is not a universal way of thinking. How one answers to the question ‘who are you?’, for example, is culturally dependent. Not all cultures and not all individual people have their minds as shaped by economic thinking as others. But it is interesting to become aware of the extent to which many of us are subject to economic thinking. I am very much someone who does not agree with many of the values that currently seem to underly our (western) societal systems – being valued (being worthy) only when you are financially productive being one of them. But although there are many underlying mechanisms and values in our society that I am becoming increasingly aware of, there is so many that I am still not seeing. We have had years and years and years of upbringing in a society characterized by an economic way of thinking. So, it takes time to become of aware of that. And it takes time to break free from that way of thinking if you want to.
I became aware of another aspect of economic thinking when it comes to hobbies very recently. Although I think you can call yourself a painter without earning money with your painting, until last week I also thought that the ideal situation was to earn money with your hobby. A blogpost from Bell's POV changed that. She writes:
The thing is, if you turn everything you love into work, you'll be working every single day of your life. [...] Anything that is connected to money comes with frustrations. [...] You need to be able to step away from work and do something just for fun. That is truly what a hobby is meant to be.
To go back to the example of hobbies and identifying yourself a hobby: it is not necessary to be good at it or to spend a lot of time on it and you do not have to try and make your hobby into your living. There is no actual explicitly determined requirements for you to call something a hobby or to identify with it. The most important thing is that you enjoy it. And that is a freeing thought because that leaves for a lot more hobbies to talk about.
For me that means I will call myself a volleyball player, a fire spinner, a surfer, a writer and a storyteller. Ask me again next week and you might hear a different answer. And in terms of my favorite hobby a lesson that I learned is that for me there has actually been a pretty consistent hobby underlying all the others. And that is learning. I adore learning. I like the steep learning curve when I learn something new and then I will enjoy doing that and I will try to teach others until the learning curve slows down and I find a new activity where I can start from zero again.
That's it. I love learning and I love seeing the process of learning in others. When you meet me for the first time and ask me introductory questions, I hope that that will somehow shine through. I hope that there will be a question to which I can answer that I love being a student and a teacher and then a student again and that that is also how I approach life.
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