RECREATION. HOBBIES.
[Sidenote: Games.]
Recreation may be divided into games, reading and hobbies. Games occupy
a useful part in daily life. Indoor ones form a pleasant way of passing
the time, and helping to take the mind off work and everything else
that tends to cause worry or fatigue.
Outdoor ones tempt people to fresh air and exercise, and thus
constitute a valuable aid to health. And games of all sorts do one
thing, they teach people to take a beating in good part. By games we
mean of course the playing, not the watching of them. One game even
badly played is worth fifty hours of looking on while others take part,
even if they are experts and play vastly better than we could ever do.
[Sidenote: Hobbies.]
Yet games necessitate having someone to play with, and there are many
times in our lives when we cannot have anyone else to take a part. That
is the great advantage of hobbies, they can be enjoyed in solitude.
Not that we have any wish to drive people to solitude, for there is
nothing worse than being alone too much. Solitary people are very apt
to become too introspective, and that is always a bad thing for their
nervous systems. If people avoid the society of their fellow-men they
acquire an undue sense of their own importance, and their own affairs
loom too largely in their thoughts. Furthermore, they are liable to
become depressed, and to develop that mixture of conceit and diffidence
which is of all things most objectionable.
It is because solitude is inevitable that we are anxious to lay
stress on those things which will effectually prevent that morbid
introspection and make life brighter and happier. And hobbies fulfil
both these requirements. There are thousands of people who are doomed
to live in lodgings. They have no one at hand to join them in a game,
and unless they have some congenial occupation wherewith to occupy
their minds, life becomes a poor, dull affair.
[Sidenote: Hobbies and home life.]
It often happens, too, that those who have the privileges of family
life have to depend on themselves for their own amusement at times.
The other people in the house may be busy or disinclined to take part
in any game. Besides that, games are apt to pall in time; you cannot
carry them on indefinitely. Then it is that a hobby becomes a priceless
boon. It does more than enliven solitude, it makes all the difference
to home-life also.
A man returned home after a hard day at business, and after he had had
his meal sat down and spent the evening gazing with a bored, tired
countenance into the fire, a cheerful spectacle for his poor wife, who
had also had a worrying day, and would have been glad of a little
brightness. The boys and girls had even to be sent out of the room, as
their talking made father’s head ache.
As he sat there his one thought was of his work. It was all he had to
think about, for he had never cultivated any pursuits or broadened
his interests in any way. And running the mind in one groove is, like
singing on one note, a tiring occupation. That man was always tired,
body and soul. Of late, too, he had had another worry, for he had found
himself becoming more nervous and irritable, and with less confidence
in his own powers. The dread had come upon him that he was going to
break down. And as he thought of his wife and family, who would be left
insufficiently provided for, it nearly broke his heart.
Twelve months later if you had gone to that same house you would
have seen the table littered with prints and negatives. Blessed be
untidiness, of that sort at any rate; it generally means, like the dirt
on a boy’s face, that someone is happy. There were no tired looks now,
and no sending the young people out of the room. Instead, everyone was
cheerful, everyone talking at once, and as for father, you would not
have known him. Even the children did not know what was coming over
him, he was getting so jolly. His friends, too, and he had more of
them of late than he used to have, were glad to meet him, instead of
fighting shy of him as an old bore like they used to do.
The secret of it all was that he had been to a lecture on birds, and
the lecturer had described the fascination of photographing them in
their haunts. He had taken it up, and the result was that he had seen
more than birds, for his eyes had been opened to all the beauties of
Nature, and he had found the world a very pleasant place to live in
after all. The fresh air and exercise which he had enjoyed whilst
following his new bent had banished his dyspepsia, his headaches had
disappeared, and he had forgotten all about the palpitation and vague
pains and discomforts that used to worry the life out of him.
His nervous system had taken a new lease of life. He had lost all his
dreads and forebodings, and had regained his old confidence in business
matters. The old wearing monotony of life had gone, and his brain was
alive and keen with varied interests, for no hobby comes alone, it
invariably brings its friends along with it. And the more the merrier.
This welcome change in his manner of spending his evenings, the change
from wearisome brooding to congenial pastime, had given to his mind the
repose it had stood so badly in need of, and for want of which it had
been slowly but surely drifting towards a breakdown. For the latter
is due, as we have already seen, to a gradual disorganisation of the
various functions of the body undermining the nervous system. And a
hobby such as this, combining indoor and outdoor pursuits, does more
than relieve the tedium of a tired brain, it invigorates every organ
and tissue in the body.
[Sidenote: Hobbies in the treatment of breakdowns.]
And they not only act as a direct preventive of breakdowns themselves,
but they are an invaluable aid to other forms of treatment. If a
lethargic person is ordered to take exercise, it is a constant
difficulty to keep him up to it, unless he has some other inducement.
Get him to take up some outdoor pursuit, such as gardening or natural
history in one or other of its multifarious phases, and he will have
exercise in abundance without knowing that he is taking it. Numbers of
men would be vastly better in health, too, if they had more exercise
after reaching home, especially on winter evenings, instead of sitting
by the fire until bedtime. If told to take up physical drill, they may
go on with it for a time, but will almost certainly get tired of these
duty exercises after a while. Persuade them to take up wood carving or
carpentry, and they will get all that they need and a large measure of
enjoyment at the same time.
Many a case of gout, dyspepsia, sluggish liver and such-like ailments
in stout, plethoric persons can be cured by this means more effectually
than by any other.
Or it may be that patients are ordered rest, because of some
overstrain, or a weakness in some particular organ, as the lungs or
heart. It is difficult enough to secure this rest in the case of a
woman, but in that of a man it is wellnigh impossible. There is no
more restless being than a man who is either confined to the house or
unable to walk far. He gets tired of reading and playing “Patience,”
and the result is that in most instances he moons about aimlessly, a
nuisance to himself and to those around him. Once let him take up some
hobby which will interest him, and the case becomes entirely different.
He can take his camera and photograph places or people, near at hand
or farther away according to his powers of walking, and can find ample
occupation in the evenings or on wet days, developing, printing and
arranging the pictures he has taken.
Or he can take his specimen case and spend whole days quietly hunting
for wild flowers, birds’ eggs, or anything else he is inclined for,
and obtain a vast amount of pleasure afterwards in setting out his
treasures. Or he can do a bit of gardening, heavy or light according to
his capabilities, and if he has a greenhouse he can fill up his time
profitably when the state of the weather does not permit of outside
work.
Hobbies have ceased to be regarded simply as a means of putting in
time, and have come to occupy an important part in medical treatment.
Consumptive sanatoria, for instance, present a very different
appearance now from what they did some years ago. At that time the
visitor was met with the pitiable spectacle of a melancholy array of
dispirited patients, lying about in all stages of dejection. Now he
sees men and women engaged in gardening and other outdoor pursuits,
looking as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves, which is just
what they _are_ doing.
The same benefit from such pursuits is found in all cases where fresh
air is required, as in anæmia, neurasthenia, etc. An outdoor hobby
secures the fresh air, and supplies the best of tonics for nervous
systems. And when breathing exercises are ordered at the same time, the
easiest way to ensure their being carried out is to induce the patient
to learn singing, which is the best and most agreeable form in which
they can be applied.
As to the stage of convalescence from any illness, any medical man
will testify that people who have hobbies get well very much sooner
than those who have not. And in this case, as in all those of people
whose lives and movements are limited owing to some physical weakness,
if they have no such pursuits to brighten their lives, the incessant
worrying and brooding are very liable to result in neurasthenia, which
is the half-way house to breakdowns.
And for those of my readers who still retain the priceless gift of
health, and wish to retain it, a hobby is better than all the riches in
the world. It is independent of riches, too, for anyone can cultivate
it, the poor as easily as the wealthy. More easily, in fact, for the
more difficult a thing is to acquire the more we enjoy it when we have
secured it. The man or woman who can fill their house with treasures of
art and literature simply by signing a cheque rarely appreciate what
they have got.
[Sidenote: Choice of a hobby.]
When making a start take up anything, it does not matter what. One
hobby leads to another, and it leads to something else, which is one
of the most potent aids to health. For no sooner has anyone begun a
fresh pursuit than they meet with someone who is interested in the
same subject. A hobby has been the means of the beginning of many a
lifelong friendship. And a congenial friendship is the best remedy for
the headaches and heartaches and soulaches with which lonely people are
so often afflicted, to the detriment of their nervous systems.
For those who wish to cultivate some hobby to act as an evening
pastime, and give the mind its needed rest, it is important to choose
one that is a contrast to their daily occupation. If they work with
their brains all day, they should take up some pursuit that involves
manual exercise. If they are working all day with their hands, they
are better advised to fix on one that makes a call upon the mind,
without much physical exertion. They may start a course of reading, for
instance.
Now reading implies either amusement or instruction, or the two
combined, as in the case of history or travel. In these days both these
subjects are presented in a form that is not only an education, but
also a welcome relaxation to the tired brain. It is a relief sometimes
to have our minds carried back to the ages, and realise that the
troubles which beset us are just the same as those from which people
have suffered right down through the centuries.
We can have all the pleasures of travel without the
disadvantages--gazing at the ruins of some Indian temple without being
suffocated by the heat, or wandering in tropical forests without being
bitten to death by mosquitoes and running the risk of malaria.
Or if the eyes be too tired for reading, there are hosts of other
pursuits which will render agreeable diversion to the mind. A
husband and wife who spend their evenings, the one with music or
some interesting hobby, and the other with her fancy work or French
painting, are more likely to be “happy though married,” than if they
sit in their chairs to a growling accompaniment of the day’s worries
and a querulous account of the servants’ doings.
Life without a hobby is like a dinner without salt; it may be
inoffensive, but there is a sad lack of relish about it.