a meaningful life
Hobbies: A Meaningful Life Must Not Be Boring
However, in trying to live life to the fullest, you must not spill it.
Mon.Dec.16th.2024 - Ubochi Eke
There is no life if you don't live and living A Meaningful Life does not by any measure mean a boring life. The balance however, between a fun and Meaningful existence and pure unbridled, pleasurable wastes of a life, is the challenge.
In a life of meaning, pleasures form the balancing massage for a life fraught with challenges, struggles and legitimate labour in the hustle to ensure that you leave the remnants of your existence on the earth, spent not wasted.
In seeking those pleasures however, you must know that they are the reason why most people never achieve their perfect aims.
In a bid to be cool, to live their best life, to enjoy this beautiful world, they sink into a perpetual swim in the waters of pleasure and never have time again for the gainful and sacrificial tasks that ensure A Meaningful Life.
Hobbies form a great companion to A Meaningful Life, allowing the disciplined to never feel left out in the joys of life while navigating the stormy waters of spilling their souls into the works and life's responsibilities that formulate A Meaningful Life.
The balance is in finding hobbies that achieve Rest, Recovery, Rejuvenation, Redemption, Revolution, Inspiration and Immersion without at all falling prey to a leisurely stroll through life that leads to an overuse of free time such that your life becomes a vacation that yields nothing worth noting and makes you a traveller through the world yet with your travels not worthy of a visit when the story of the world, even your own small corner of the world, is told.
REST
The most important use of hobbies is first for rest. But what exactly will you be resting for, if you play all the time. Rest as a hobby connotes a natural dependency on work which means that it must come at the end of strenuous engagements.
This is self balancing because it can only come after you have applied yourself and exhausted your self, in your pursuit of something, hopefully something worth while.
For a good example of this, imagine Swimming for fun not sport, playing cards without the gamble, golf that is not centered on a business deal. In essence, hobbies for hobby sake and yes sleep qualifies, timed sleep and not an "efuluefuous" decomposition on a bed that is tired of seeing you.
Rest is a rewarding refreshment from hustle that is sweetest
when the body is thoroughly exhausted and the mind well used but it is
ultimately for the body and this doesn't change even in our modern AI assisted
world. Man must work, even if the nature of the work has changed alot, and when
he has worked, he must rest.
Learn to rest and feel no guilt about it, unless you are resting after having done nothing to need the rest. This is the measure of abuse. evidence that you are drifting into a life of just pleasure, that will seem sweet, but will not end in A Meaningful Life.
RECOVERY
The human is not designed for hospitals, by design we are self servicing vessels with the capacity for own repair but you must set yourself on bedrest if your body and mind can have the space to recover.
As you continue on the journey of life you will have injuries and ailments. This is quite different from disease and do not need any other medicine other than good food and time.
In this case food is not always a meal, but can be gentle music, light conversation and recovery of the mind not the body, all of this depending on the nature of your injuries.
Ailments and injuries are the consequences of the battles you must face to pass examinations, to win elections and to fight and survive the actual wars of life that are required to enforce A Meaningful Life.
When you are engaged in divorce and you may, whether you like it or not, are at fault or not. When you wrestle inheritance with your kin, compete for relevance in your field, contest for awards and in all areas of life, when the world stretches you without consideration for your will and schedule, without care for your health, without timeline, you may very well wear down and must find time and space to recover.
The life of meaning is not devoid of impossible events and wars that are foist on you both by virtue of your own adventures and just general counter activity by other humans whose activities oppose your interests and directions. Keep in mind that even good interests can be opposed by other people's best intentions which do not tally with yours.
Hobbies when well adapted will enable you to recover from physical, mental and spiritual ailments and enable you to continue living or to get ready to war again.
For this, imagine the recuperating effects of vacationing and swimming for the ease and physiotherapy it introduces to your ligaments and not the pretty girls on the beach. Consider also the companionship of a gentle night out, drinking mild drinks and having light conversation with friends and the reparative effect it has on your mental well being. Consider the benefit of Yoga or a service of worship, meditation or an inspirational event and the reparative effects they can have on your spirit.
When available, a good wife/Husband and children who know how to limit the load and increase the joy can make the struggle of life worth the blood, the sweat and the tears.
In each case, the hobby must tool itself to relief you of stress and not to induce it, signaling the deep difference between Yoga and playing in a football match, worship and a night Vigil, meditation and a debate.
The body, mind and spirit, need reparative activities that enable you to recover from the strains of life, rest included, but also activities that are tame in nature, which retrain your systems to repair themselves of the damages acquired on the journey to A Meaningful Life and often just so that you can stand up and get back in the middle of the ring, for a second round.
REJUVENATION
In dictionary terms, rejuvenation means to “to give new energy or vigour to something”. In essence it is quite different from Rest and also Recovery, it is revitalization.
You need revitalization, Reinvigoration - new energy.
As you journey to A Meaningful Life, you will often meet points at which you loose energy and you will need to rest and recover but often you will meet moments when you need a NEW BOOST of energy, a resurgence, a burst and for this you need hobbies that enable a reinvigoration of your mind, body and spirit.
A life in which you surround yourself with friends who downcast you, parental Guidance that weakens you, educations that belittle you - then you will always be mentally drained.
In the same guise, ministers and preachers that curse at you and brand you bad, advisors that paint God weak and other attacks on your spiritual underpinnings will weaken your spiritual energy. In physical terms, if you carry the load of those around you and are the source of support for all the people and activities your surround yourself with, then you will always be drained.
Find hobbies that rejuvenate you. Find a circle of people, whether friends or social groups, that encourage, find staff, collegues and companies where you have physical supports for the engagements of the day, find spiritual guidiance and self edifications that reinvigorate you, so that you are not lethargic by over-load, on your journey to A Meaningful Life.
A Meaningful Life, is work, both in its acquisition and its defence and a key fuel is the constant rejuvenation of positive company, edifiying spiritual engagement and supportive physical aids that enable you to gain new energy and to save your energy.
Due examples will include a conscious selection of faith and place of worship, frequency and timing. For example, it would make sense to attend a place of worship that is actually concerned with your wellbeing and not your economic contributions, and where you feel alive after attending and not beaten down, unless of course your life is unclean and the message only pains you because it hits home.
In the physical sense, you must invest to ensure that the people around you carry a reasonable weight in your shared activites and when people are not handicapped and yet do not carry their weight, to give them reasonable time and support to change and if they don’t to abandon them without regret.
In the mental sense, you must ensure that you find games, activities and persons that engage and inspire, such that you are always being renewed by your natural leisure interactions and not overburdened by a life of doggery, where even your choice in play, is a chore.
REDEMPTION
Sometimes you will fall.
Get back up.
The re-election of Donald Trump, the vindication of the administration of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the success of the Dangote Refinery, The network of Elon Musk, the long walk of Mandela, Azikiwe and the Independence of Nigeria, BYD as the worlds premier auto maker and in many smaller cases, the day to day summit of previously insurmountable demons and walls, are the hallmarks of life that make the stories of greatness more compelling.
Get back up.
You must have things you do, that enable you to “survive” failure and not be so beaten by the fall that you cannot get up from your bed.
For me this is simple. I keep animals.
This simple hobby gives me a point of impact that is small and manageable where I can always succeed.
Daily, my chickens, goats, fishes, Dogs and other pet companions and future dinner victims, depend on me and even if I fail at the seemingly insurmountable visions that I dream up daily, I am rested in the gentle Interactions and success of keeping young chicks alive and in their little lives, I find redemption.
In an overload of blessings, i am also blessed with children and they are the best at this, I also happen to have people who deeply love me, but I recognize that is not an option available to everyone and that is why I used the animals as an example.
Redemption is the feeling that you are not a loss, that you may fail but are not a complete failure, that you may be down but the game is not so permanently rigged that you cannot recover.
When it rains, the very first rain of the year, I go outside, butt naked and I bath in the waters of the Gods and I am redeemed in the knowledge that "God is Still God", that the Seasons still hold, that the world is not a game of charades, that this life is on course and maybe, just maybe, so am I.
Find the things you can do, to plant you in a stable knowledge of the world and a confidence in the possibilities, especially when you are down. Plant something, raise something, care for someone who needs you and remember that if the aforementioned persons above can fall and still stand back taller, as memorabilia of huiman resilience, towering above their peers who avoided such challenges, maybe you too can manage to fall without allowing your visions to fade.
Find a thing that you do, that reminds you that you can get back up and that the end will justify the struggles and the brief detours are just that, minor delays that will not affect the final score, and I don’t see how playing in a professional football league, where you will be beaten black and blue by the other teams does this job. Pick Roses my dear and hand the flowers to your neighbours, they will smile and you can nurse your wounds with joy, because the thorns will not forget to poke you simply because your using them for redemption.
Find a hobby, something you are good at, something mentally and physically rewarding, something spiritually edifying, where you give and receive confirmation of your importance, significance and right of place in the world – you can choose to teach the neighbourhood kids, to play football, but be careful what kind of competitions, you register for!
Redemption should not replace your primary course but is necessary as a matter of course to mitigate depression and enable you to consistently function, even in the midst of investigations, prosecution, Limitations and any other minor and major delays that seem to put your primary works at risk.
REVOLUTION
Hobbies should be exercise, they should stretch you without stress and expand your range and capacity such that overtime, you can find that in merely living you have created a natural revolution of yourself and have expanded your coast in abilities and ambition, naturally.
The word revolution here, means a vicious climax and revisit of the structure and state of a person, nation or State of Affairs - this is what I have in mind in using the word.
I read – 2 hours a day, every single day, including yes today and yesterday.
This is not a chore, it is not a work, it is a habit and in that guise has become a hobby.
This hobby took a revolution and is causing a constant revolution. Such hobbies are not a first choice, eating Banana Split Ice cream while binging on Netflix is a much more easy solution to evenings.
I am not suggesting reading. For you it can be Chess, it can be Hiking, it can be Meditation, it can be anything that enables you to free yourself of the world and immerse yourself in something new, to expand your mental, physical and spiritual resilence without any inducement or compensation. Actions done as a habit, which revolve your world and expand your thinking, capacity and spiritual balance as a matter of natural coincidence.
The choice in what to do must be yours but you must recognize that A Meaningful Life is not supposed to be a boring life, but it is a purposeful life, a curated life, a life of choices and in the selection of hobbies, you must choose wisely, in-order to find the hobbies that will add to you and give you a natural growth over time, without adversarial efforts, just a bit of play, a little integration of habits, a quite adjustment in tastes, that is designed for a meaningful contribution to your meaningful life.
INSPIRATION
You must find the things that inspire you because A Meaninful Life, is nothing more than living a life that is inspired.
If you swim and ideas come, dance and ideas come, drink and ideas come, worship and ideas come, farm and ideas come, play ball and ideas come, do more of it.
The hard part on finding hobbies for inspiration is that many people have hobbies related to the places they are raised, the people that raised them and their economic state – expand your coast.
It is very important that you search widely for all manner of activities, sports, play and engagements in order to find the ones that will enable you to transend into a space where your spirit can have the clarity to envision.
For me this is worship and immersion in the natural sufferings of my people. As such I invest quite a tremendous amount of money in being able to blend in seamlessly with all classes of society and relish random social exchanges in random corners of restaurants and bars, when my identity is not know.
Equally it means that I invest an immense amount of energy in personal space, such that I can commune with God in the quite abstraction of whimsical worship, uninterrupted by the trudging noise of even house keepers.
I don’t know what it would be for you but there must be activities that when you do them, enables a rising of your spirit and a deeper connectivity with yourself, such that you think about the best things, for the world and yourself. Do them more but don’t confuse my words for an excuse to do drugs. Drugs are not hobbies, although I am not writing them off completely, as essential components of some people’s journey to A Meaningful Life.
IMMERSION
The world is coursing around us and even through us and we must be happy and blessed even in the midst of the tornadoes that strike us with violent episodes of natural wickedness.
Immerse yourself in life, in such a manner that you are always living A Good and A Meaningful Life, even when you are busy doing nothing.
Hobbies should blend your pass times and your work, your life and responsibilities and your free time. Monday to Sunday, live in an expression of life that is immersed in both nature and your own collective accumulations of interests and destinations.
Your life with your spouse or children, parents or friends, colleagues and business partners should be filled with consciously curated and joyful hobbies that chain it all together in a conscious immersion in useful activities that make perfect use of your “useless” hours.
Hobbies when they are abnormal become laborious distractions that even enter into your purposed times in opposition to your most important tasks and obligations. For example, the idea of being a member of a serious soccer league, when you are not in anyway so passionate about sports is a confused idea for me, it would make more sense to join a comical group of non-athletes who play the ball over the fence, such that missing a match makes no meaning and you can play in perfect rhythm to your other activities of life, inviting friends to play along, even if they do not know how to spell ball.
Drink with co-workers, play pool with Church members, Dance with your daughters, play ball with your Husband (although he will complain), do thinks that are normal, with the people that matter and around the objects of your life's ambition and in the course that leads to your Meaningful life, such that in merely living, destressing and loving Every bit of your free time, you are equally immersed in the objects that add meaning and life and play are one and the same game.
IN CONCLUSION
Hobbies are for your mind, your body and your spirit.
The hobbies best for your mind are often different from the ones for your body and your spirit. In some cases they are all the same, but in all cases each hobby should aid a part of you, without harming another part of you.
This is why drugs are a risky bit and partying the Night away while often stress relieving for the mind, is not a great idea because it takes a toll on the body.
Those who outrightly rule out vices, are judging in wholesale, to each his own but be cautious about what you choose to do to pass the time.
And there it is, the simple definition of a hobby, “something you do to pass the time”, let it pass, if possible let what you do to pass it add
value to your mind, your body And/or your spirit but in all pass it, don’t
waste it and for God’s sake, don’t burn it on the alter of pleasures that end a
life without allowing it to be A Meaningful Life.
AML - SERIES PROFILE
A MEANINGFUL LIFE
the "A MEANINGFUL LIFE" series is a non Religious, Non Enterprise look at life and meaning, written with the hope of getting you to a life of pure Joy, real Happiness and Satisfaction with your own life, regardless of your faith and economic profile.
It does not intend to preach, but where necessary it will. At the end, the desired result is that from this series you will pick up the tools to give your life greater meaning, and live a more satisfying existence.
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