One finds these quiet admissions now, tucked into the corners of public forums. A person confesses that their hobbies have become entirely passive. Reading. Watching videos. The simple, tactile pleasure of petting a cat. There is, it seems, a profound sense of lack in these moments, a feeling that something essential is missing.
A wish to be the sort of person who partakes in activities deemed useful, wholesome, or even, as the poster put it, “soul-nourishing.” A strange pressure. The desire to crochet, to tend to plants, to do something tangible with one’s hands, is met with an invisible barrier. A feeling of it not being natural. One is left to wonder what, precisely, is stopping them.
It was not always this way.
One remembers a different arrangement of things. The balsa-wood airplane, for instance. A delicate skeleton of a thing, its tissue-paper skin stretched taut, smelling faintly of glue and ambition. These kits cost very little. A boy could spend a whole afternoon assembling a Spitfire or a Mustang, and the world felt entirely contained within that small, focused task.
But the world, it seems, had other plans for balsa wood. The same lightness and strength that made it ideal for a model wing was discovered to be perfect for the core of a surfboard, or for the enormous, city-powering blades of a wind turbine. A child’s pastime swept up into the grand machinery of industry and energy.
And so, the material world asserts itself in unexpected ways.
The simple pursuit is complicated, its components made luxurious by competing demands. That which was once a humble diversion now carries the weight of a market. The wooden model becomes a specialty item, a costly relic. In its place, a digital alternative like Minecraft offers infinite construction without physical expense, a world built of light and code.
Yet the quiet yearning remains. It is a peculiar sort of disquiet. A confusion about what it means to spend one’s time well, when the very materials for doing so have been repurposed for other, larger, more serious things. What is one to make of it, this feeling that even our leisure is no longer entirely our own?
A strange state of affairs.
According to the article, this trend is not merely a matter of shifting interests, but rather a symptom of a broader cultural malaise, wherein the boundaries between work and leisure have become increasingly blurred. In this era of perpetual connectivity, the pressure to be constantly productive and efficient has led many to view hobbies as an indulgence, a frivolous waste of time that could be better spent on more “practical” pursuits. The irony, of course, is that hobbies have long been recognized as a vital component of a healthy and balanced —, providing an outlet for creativity, stress relief, and social connection.
As The New Yorker noted, the decline of hobbies has also led to a decline in the sense of community and belonging that often accompanies these activities, leaving many individuals feeling isolated and disconnected from others.
As I reflect on this phenomenon, I am struck by the ways in which our collective priorities have shifted over time.
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Everyone’s busy—aren’t we busy, partly, with hobbies? What counts as a hobby, anyway? “All my hobbies are passive,” a poster on the website Ask …
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