In Defense of Useless Hobbies

Why do I waste my time learning useless skills and practicing useless crafts?

The Inquiry, by Tristram Ellis

I heard a sound as of thunder, which I thought to be caused by a wave of the sea, and the trees rocked and the earth quaked, and I covered my face.

And I found that a serpent was coming towards me. It was thirty cubits in length, and its beard was more than two cubits in length, and its body was covered with gold scales, and its eyebrows were of pure lapis lazuli…

And it opened its mouth to me, as I was lying flat on my stomach before it, and it said unto me, "Who hath brought thee hither? Who hath brought thee hither, O miserable one?”

That quotation is from the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, the oldest complete story that has come down to us from antiquity. It was written in Hieratic, during the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, and I read it in the original Egyptian from the comfort of my bed, four thousand years after it was written.

Reading an ancient story is an experience unlike any other. It is a glimpse into the mind of an alien — utterly foreign, yet oddly familiar. A yawning gap of time, culture, and language divides me from the author, but I read his tale nevertheless and I marveled when the sailor encountered the serpent god with eyebrows of lapis lazuli.

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I've often felt the pressure to better myself, and I occasionally crack a technical manual or a literary classic in my spare time in deference to that pressure. I've known colleagues whose hobbies are essentially identical to their work — Nothing would depress me more, though I’d probably be better at my job.

Instead, my hobbies are almost militantly useless. I write a blog in which I mathematically quantify the hot-dog-ness of various sandwiches, and simulate spin density waves if they were made of guinea pigs. The only foreign languages I speak are Latin and Ancient Egyptian, into which I've translated The House of the Rising Sun (so useful). The history books I love best are the furthest removed from my own time. In general, my delight in a hobby is inversely proportional to its utility.

But despite, or perhaps because of, the unavoidable pressure to be productive that pervades modern life, I feel that my useless hobbies are not only personally valuable, but essential to a life well-lived, and I think the ancient philosophers tend to agree with me.

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Wúwéi, non-action in accord with the natural flow of the universe, was praiseworthy to the Daoist sage Zhuangzi, born 2300 years ago in ancient China. Zhuangzi was renowned across China for his wisdom, and his counsel was greatly desired by the political elites of the time. When the duke of Qi, one of many desiring wise counsellors, invited Zhuangzi to become his chief minister, his messengers found the old sage fishing among the river reeds. Upon receiving this job offer, Zhuangzi did not look up from his rod, and said,

“I have heard that there is a sacred turtle in Chu that died three thousand years ago. The duke keeps it in a casket wrapped in cloth, and has placed it in a temple. May I inquire whether the sacred turtle wanted to be dead and to have its bones venerated by man? Or was its intention to stay alive and crawl around in the mud, dragging its tail?"

"Naturally," replied the messengers, "it hoped to crawl around in the mud, dragging its tail."

"Go home," said Zhuangzi, "I also want to crawl around in the mud, dragging my tail."

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Epicurus too understood the value of non-productive pursuits. He was a Hellenistic philosopher who suffered from chronic pain all his life, and perhaps fittingly, developed a philosophy focused on pleasure and pain. To Epicurus, what is true pleasure? True pleasure is not the fleeting pleasures of wealth, rich food, and debauchery, but a restrained, mental satisfaction that lingers, like heat from the embers of a hearth. True pleasure is the absence of pain, and freedom from unnecessary desires.

This pleasure comes with freedom from the desire for wealth, freedom from the fear of death and of the gods, the bond of the tight-knit community, and from pure intellectual exploration — this pleasure is serenity, ataraxia in Greek. The fear of death was simply one more pain to overcome in the life of Epicurus, and so his followers wrote thusly on their tombstones: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo — I was not, then I was, I am no more, I do not mind. 

Epicurus reminds us that pursuit of wealth does only so much to decrease the pain of life. For indeed, what shall it profit a man, to gain the world but lose his soul?

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But for me, there is still more to life than wúwéi and ataraxia, for there is pleasure too in purpose. John F. Kennedy, another great philosopher, spoke to this purpose when he said of the Apollo moon mission that we choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.

Indeed, to strive for one’s excellence, for one’s aretḗ, in any field of human endeavor, for no practical benefit whatsoever — this is the highest pursuit of man, his virtue par excellence, and his greatest good. To strive for mastery in a field, regardless of practical benefit and indeed in spite of it, is a noble and fulfilling pursuit.

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So why do I waste my time? To exist in non-action, to be free of the burden of utility, to find ataraxia, to strive for something difficult, yet not lose myself in pursuit of material gain, and because ultimately, it is my time to waste.

In the words of Seneca, omnia aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est — All else is foreign to us, only time is ours. And I intend to spend mine generously spiced with those useless hobbies that bring me joy.

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