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What Hobbies Do For the Lucky Few

seniors art2Looking down across the harbour on this beautiful July morning, I see dragon boats slicing through the water, kayaks skimming over the top, young women jogging, and teenagers skateboarding, but no sign of the Lucky Few. It is almost eleven o’clock— where are they, and what are they doing?

In this city where elders are so richly represented, mornings belong to young people. Old people, like me, don’t usually emerge from their condos and townhouses until well into the day. Well of course, I reason, why shouldn’t we take our time? After all, we’re retired—time is a commodity we have. We take our time to get moving in the mornings. We linger over coffee and the morning paper. We pick up the novel we started yesterday. We watch the news.

But some of us don’t. A few elders can be seen walking early in the morning. One seventy-five woman I know heads downtown for her morning coffee before 9 o’clock, and several senior men belong to a golf group who drive to their course for a nine o’clock tee-off several times a week. And one remarkable woman heads off in her car for early morning meetings with a charity group she leads.

What makes the difference? I’d venture to say it’s a compelling interest. Or a hobby, for want of a better word. My online Webster describes a hobby as, “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure”. Sometimes it’s so much more—a burning desire to create something, a strong motive to join others in a game of bridge or golf. Or a determination to raise our health to the best level possible with an early morning workout.

I would say that these seniors are truly the lucky ones. Research (Small, 2012) states that elderly people who physically move around, who have an interest that prompts them to think, to solve, and to create, do live longer, and certainly better.

Other research (Russell, 2013) determines that people who have hobbies early in life are more apt to continue them in their old age. People who paint continue to paint, people who play bridge continue to play bridge, people who play music continue to be engaged in music. And we all know at least one elderly man who continues to golf well into his eighties (or sometimes nineties).

This does not bode well for people who have never taken the time during their work lives to develop a leisure pursuit—or even to develop leisure time. Some researchers have explored the phenomenon of executives who were driven to fill their lives with work, never taking time out. With a few exceptions, their poor record of longevity reflects a disregard for their health and well-being.

But what about Albert Einstein, Alice Walker, David Suzuki and Jane Goodall, people whose work has fulfilled their dreams of doing what they truly enjoy well into their last years—while at the same time, changing the world?

I would say their work became their passion, and hence their hobby. Or as George Bernard Shaw said, “Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby”. And he should know, having died writing his last play (Why She Would Not) at the age of 94.

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