A HOBBY NEEDED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3463, 31 March 1930, Page 7

A HOBBY NEEDED.

On the last afternoon of the Old Year I called on a business acquaintance. He was at his office much later Upm usual, writes Hamilton Fyfe in fne Daily Chronicle. “You’re not hurrying,’’ I said, “Not catching your usual train?” “Why should I hurry?” he returned gloomily. “To-night Igo home for ever.” He was retiring, as so many men in business have retired during the last few days. The New Year is a convenient time to dissolve partnership, to hand over management to others, to make changes,in an office. For ifiany men, therefore, the first weeks of a' new year are filled with strange, uncomfortable experiences. Their days pass in a curious dream-like way. They seem to be having a holiday, yet they know it isn’t a holiday, for, so long as they live, it will never come to an end. When they wake in the morning, they have a pleasant Sunday-ish feeling that there is no hurry to get up. They can dress at a leisurely pace. It won’t matter if thev are late for breakfast. This isn’t so bad. Yet, after breakfast when, instead of preparing to be off for the day, they sit down with a pipe and the newspaper or look on of the windows, they have an uncomfortable empty sensation. The whole day stretches before them. What arc they to do? Well, at first they can usually occupy themselves agreeably. They play golf, or they take long walks, or they read. They look up old friends (mostly retired men like themselves). But after a while they find themselves getting up later and going to bed earlier. The zest for open air and exercise vanishes. Reading becomes a bore. To pick up a novel in the evening after a hard day’s work was refreshing. Books morning, noon, and night are too much of a eood thing. They are perpetually brooding over the loss of their chief interest in life. Every day for thirty, forty, perhaps 50 years, they have been at work, perhaps building up a business, perhaps turning a wheel round and round like a squirrel in a cage. Anyway, active! or passive, they have had continuous occupation which has absorbed most of their energy. Now that is gone, they feel their life is over. / Allien men feel like that heir hold on life relaxes. Their vital processes weaken. Thay are easily knocked over by trifling ailments. They soon die. Doctors certify, “cause of death, this or that.” Relations seldom admit the truth, even among themselves. What these poor men have died of has been dullness, having nothing to do. Now what can save from such a melancholy fate as that? There is a retired men go into a decline such as I have pictured. Numbers of them live contentedly, enjoy after their retirement the beg!; years of their lives.

These are the men who have cultivated interests outside their business. These are the men with hobbies. They have looked forward to their retirement so that they can devote themselves in earnest to what has been only an offtime job It may bo they have some scientific or historical study, some course of reading they long to pursue. It may lie that they are devoted gardeners or poultry-farmers. They have cherished all sorts of ideas for improving their chickens; for increasing their growth of vegetables; adding to the charm of their borders, their rockeries, their vistas of lawn and pergola and roecbed. Now they can put their notions to the test. Or perhaps they have had a longing to travel, to see other lands and dwell among other peoples, not as hurried tourists, hut with"time to settle down for a bit here or there; to make inclinations their guide; to indulge fancy, whims even. if a retired man has no hobby, ho is in a parlous state. Yet he may escape from that by pretending to have one. can most, of us be at case doing nothing in particular (so perverse is human nature) if conscience tells us that we ought to he doing something, fulfilling some task. Let a man, lor example, determine to read through Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Unless he is a born reader, in which case he will enjoy himself enormously, he will that work last for years. Leisure will never pall because lie will always have the feeling that lie really ought to get that book and plough through another chapter or so.

I knew an old gentleman who had no real hobby, but who “took up” gardening. Ho simply hated weeding, hut used to force himself to it. Aon would be surprised at the small amount which kept him going quite reasonably cheerful. He would invent every kind ol excuse to delay beginning, and was always happy when he had left off. Still, that is a poor second best to Pi,vino S ome occupation yon like (whici might” by the way. be some sort ot kindliness, helping lame dogs over stiles or public* work ol a useful kind). If vou haven’t a hobby, business man, sot about finding one. You II need u cue ol these New Yeais.