Does your family have a beloved, favorite hobby? Here, Madam, is some useful information...
Happy companionship and cooperation in work create a delightful new world.
Madam — does your soul long for a wider fellowship among the members of your family? Are you afraid that the troubles of the modern city may affect the atmosphere of your home, scattering its members and driving them apart from one another? There is no doubt that you have a grave part to play in gathering the family together and preserving its unity and closeness, by exerting mighty efforts to bind together the varied inclinations of its members.
It is regrettable to say that family fellowship does not come about by mere wishing. It requires a certain activity on the part of every one of its members — a constructive activity, or in other words a useful hobby.
A hobby is nothing but that work which a person does in his hours of leisure, and does for his own pleasure. It is not a condition that one person do it alone; a number of individuals may share in it — perhaps a whole family. In this way the family gathers around a single aim, and some of the hours of the day or evening are spent in its pursuit.
Among the hobbies in which all the members of the family can share:
1 — Holding a family conference at which every member can express his opinions freely. What, then, is your own favorite hobby?
Some hobbies are confined to amusement alone, such as swimming or skiing; others bring the family profit, such as collecting stamps, or cups, or old spoons of fine workmanship — and these, with the years, sell for enormous sums.
2 — A hobby can have several faces. Some families, for instance, have taken up photography as a hobby: the father devoted himself to photographing landscapes, while the mother's hobby was photographing people; the daughter grew fond of drawing, and her brother of papering rooms and decorating them. Another family mastered woodworking, and by cooperation among its members managed to make the furniture of the house without spending a single penny on anything but the necessary supplies.
3 — One can make a hobby of one's daily work, approaching it with a calm and contented spirit, with which the work becomes an amusement instead of a burden.
One family had an open space in front of the house that nobody cared about except the father, who
had taken its cleaning upon himself. One day, during a family meeting, the members of the family decided to divide the garden into sections — some for the little ones' play, another for flowers, and the back part a pen for animals. Everyone joined in transforming the space, and out of it they created a pleasant place for their rest and amusement, and for profit from the poultry.
4 — The family can make a hobby of its goal. It once happened that some members of a family wished they had a swimming pool in which to spend their leisure hours during the summer holidays; so they sacrificed a sum of money to buy what they needed, and within a few weeks they had built in the garden of their house a swimming pool that spared them the move to the mountains in the summer season.
5 — A hobby may be a source of material profit, as we have already mentioned. There are those who have amassed a fortune from football, and others from selling stones of various shapes and sizes, which cost their owners no more than a short while on the seashore in the open air and the warm sun.
6 — If there is among the members of the family someone who does not care for hobbies, the mother should try various kinds — raising poultry, tending flowers, keeping birds, and other easy pursuits — in the hope that among them will be something to attract the members of the family, whatever their differing inclinations, and gather them together in their leisure hours.
What is beyond doubt is that a person's pleasure changes with the years. What attracted the boy when he was small no longer attracts him as a youth or a young man. Accordingly, the growing child may exchange his delight in his first hobby and pass on to another; but he never loses the knowledge and experience he has gained. Besides which, these family gatherings preserve the bonds of the family, make the memories of childhood richer and warmer, and benefit the children in the future, when they form their own families and set up their homes.
From Coronet magazine