{"id":1845,"date":"2012-05-24T23:01:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=1845"},"modified":"2012-05-24T23:01:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:01:14","slug":"in-praise-of-folly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2012\/05\/24\/in-praise-of-folly\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of Folly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you need to do the foolish thing. Or rather, what seems foolish to those who don\u2019t see the point. Chasing a tiny white ball and whacking it with a stick might seem silly. But golf and baseball can be a lot of fun. And despite the importance of our responsibilities, what some might call foolishness is no less necessary. Doctors and psychologists stress the importance of finding time to have fun, whether it\u2019s bowling or woodworking.<\/p>\n

Hobbies are activities that humans participate in for which they do not get paid. For many people, the only activities that they do for pleasure are watching television or eating a pizza. But such activities are not normally called hobbies, any more than my penchant for reading books could realistically be called a hobby. <\/p>\n

\tFrom the IRS point of view, if I were not getting paid for the books I write\u2014in other words, if I were merely writing books, sending them to agents or editors, and collecting nothing but rejections\u2014after a certain number of years the IRS would not allow me to deduct for my home office, the expense of my word-processing software, or my computer. Instead, my writing activity would be classified as simply a hobby and none of its expenses could be used as tax deductions.<\/p>\n

\tOf course, most people\u2014those who are not IRS agent\u2014would never think of writing books as a hobby. Instead, when we think of hobbies, we think of things like stamp collecting or building model airplanes. In other words, we think of things that as children we would have simply called \u201cplaying:\u201d what our parents wanted us to be doing instead of staring at the TV. And that, perhaps, is the best way of thinking of hobbies.<\/p>\n

\tGrowing up, I spent a lot of time collecting coins and collecting stamps. I also found pleasure in building plastic models of airplanes and automobiles. I attempted to build planes that would fly, but I found my creations rather consistently wound up crashing and breaking. In high school, I discovered model rocketry and soon had the unfortunate experiences of building rockets, putting engines in them, launching them, and then watching them float out of sight on their parachutes, never to be seen again.<\/p>\n

\tThe problems with so many hobbies is that they wind up being expensive. Reading books and watching television can be essentially free, if one limits oneself to watching television broadcast over the airwaves and getting books from the public library. But the other possible hobbies tend to require large investments of cash. In today\u2019s economic climate that can be a problem. After his doctor suggested he get a hobby to help him to take his mind off his unemployment worries, a man I know asked me, \u201cHow can that possibly help? It would just be one more expense I have to cut back on!\u201d<\/p>\n

\tOther people are working long hours, then spend their weekends and evenings hauling their children to soccer or ballet. They\u2019re lucky to find the time just to get eight hours of sleep each night. They\u2019re frazzled and could certainly use a hobby. But how can they devote hours to learning archery or collecting bottle caps?<\/p>\n

\tAnd so my newly purchased model rocket remains unassembled. The buildings for an unfinished train layout remain in the box that they came in. The coins and stamps remain in boxes or on shelves, covered in dust. My bicycle sits in my garage, my gym membership remains a good intention, and I have enough unread books that I will not have to buy any more for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\tI wonder how I lost the ability to do the things that I enjoy. Why can\u2019t I just say \u201cenough!\u201d and take up my toys and play with them for a while?<\/p>\n

\tIs a life worth living if there is nothing left to it but obligation? Can we keep pouring ourselves out if we never put anything back in? <\/p>\n

In the 1980s there was a movie called Koyaanisqatsi<\/a><\/em> which showed common things from uncommon perspectives: ordinary activities speeded up or slowed down in such a way that one could see the rhythms and motions of life in new ways. The film\u2019s odd title came from a Native American word that meant \u201clife out of balance.\u201d Its conceit was that modern humans were losing our way with our harried lifestyles. <\/p>\n

\tNever having fun, always needing to do something because it needs to be done is exactly the sort of thing that makes one\u2019s doctor say, \u201cStop! You need a hobby.\u201d Having an activity that you perform regularly just because you like to do it and just because you find satisfaction and pleasure in it, even though it really is meaningless and perhaps silly to those around you\u2014is actually the most important thing in your life. Just because your teenager thinks you\u2019re lame for spending your Saturday mornings playing with toy trains shouldn\u2019t keep you from it. You really want to let a teenager\u2014or anyone else\u2014decide what you\u2019ll do for the sheer pleasure of it? Don\u2019t put off pursuing your hobby for another week. Pencil it into your appointment book, even if you think you can\u2019t afford it. Your doctor might suggest you can\u2019t afford the heart attack might otherwise get, either.<\/p>\n

\tAnd really, you\u2019ll get a lot more done if you\u2019re happy and satisfied, than if you just keep pushing. An empty soul can\u2019t give much to anyone.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes you need to do the foolish thing. Or rather, what seems foolish to those who don\u2019t see the point. Chasing a tiny white ball and whacking it with a stick might seem silly. But golf and baseball can be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1846,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions\/1846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}