Creative hobbies entail creative use of the mind, body and emotions. They enable flowering of a creative personality and growth of an individual who can offer something new and beautiful to themselves and the world: Yoginder Sikand

When I was growing up (I’m talking here of around half a century or so ago!), it was common for children to have one or more hobby — an activity other than something mandated by school which they pursued after school-hours for the sheer joy of it and on which they spent a significant amount of time on a regular basis.
As a child, I had several hobbies including:

• Collecting stamps, first-day covers, coins, picture postcards, matchbox labels, autographs of ‘famous’ people and ‘toothpaste charms’— little toy animals and birds that came with a brand of toothpaste,
• Reading
• Listening to the radio
• Corresponding with pen-friends from around the world.

I spent a good deal of my spare time (and a fair portion of my pocket-money) on my hobbies.

When I look back now, I realise that most of my hobbies, which reflected and shaped my personality in ways then unknown to me, were passive. By this I mean that they did not entail much action on my part. For instance, collecting coins from different parts of the world involved buying them from a shop or receiving them as gifts and then putting them into a coin album or a simple tin. Likewise most of my other hobbies involved mere collection of items.

Hobbies that are based on collecting things can engender passive consumption, a hoarding mentality and greed, although I didn’t know this then. The substantial volume and variety of my stamps, first-day covers, coins, postcards, matchbox labels, autographs and toothpaste charm collection may have given me great delight, but they didn’t entail much effort on my part beyond collecting items and putting them in an appropriate repository.

Through these hobbies, I was not creating anything new. I was only accumulating things that others had made. These hobbies did not involve substantial development of any capabilities or hidden potential. They did not require creative use of mind, body and emotions, which I now believe a creative hobby does. At the same time, though, I must state that both my ‘hoarding’ hobbies and other hobbies such as reading, listening to the radio and corresponding with pen-friends from different countries enhanced my knowledge of the world, each in its own way.

If I were able to go back to being a child, I would choose a different range of hobbies for myself that entail creative use of the mind, body and emotions and that help the flowering of a creative personality — the growth of a person who can offer something new and beautiful to themselves and the world. Hobbies such as singing, playing a musical instrument, painting, acting, writing, tailoring, pottery, sculpture, woodwork, working with plants and animals, and so on. Here I must state that when I was a child, my parents did arrange for me to access some of these hobbies but owing to diffidence, indifference, laziness or lack of direction and commitment on my part, I failed to avail these opportunities.

Hobbies aren’t just something that only children can cultivate. Even grown-ups and ‘grown-olds’ can have hobbies. It is never too late to take up a creative hobby, not even when, like myself presently, one is in what is possibly the evening of one’s life. But it is best, I can say with the benefit of hindsight, if children start with a creative hobby early in life. Over time, they can go on to excel in it, so much so that it can even become their vocation. This is ideal as you get paid to do something that you love doing.