Does Everything You Love Have to be Useful?

When did we become so determined to make our pleasures productive?

You start painting, and someone asks whether you've considered selling your work. You enjoy taking photographs, and suddenly there's a conversation about building a portfolio. You write because you love writing, and before long someone wants to know when the book is coming out. Even walking can acquire targets, metrics and a device congratulating us for having done it correctly.

We are remarkably good at turning things we love into things we accomplish. And I'm beginning to wonder what gets lost when everything we enjoy has to justify the time it takes.

The hobby you abandoned

Think about something you once loved doing.

Painting. Playing piano. Writing. Gardening. Photography. Learning a language.

Maybe you stopped because life became busy. Work expanded. Children arrived. Responsibilities changed. Something else simply took priority.

Or perhaps you stopped because you weren't particularly good at it. That's an interesting reason. Children routinely do things they're terrible at because the doing is enjoyable. Adults tend to become more discerning. We compare. We evaluate. We decide whether something is worth the investment. And gradually an activity that once gave us pleasure acquires a performance standard. If we're not improving, producing or achieving something, why are we spending time on it?

What if you're mediocre?

This may be one of adulthood's underrated freedoms: You are allowed to be mediocre at something you love.

You can paint pictures nobody wants to buy. You can play the piano badly. You can write things that will never be published. You can grow peculiar tomatoes. You can speak French with an accent. You can take photographs that remain on your phone.

The activity does not have to become evidence of your talent. It doesn't even have to become part of your identity.

You can simply like doing it.

The trouble with potential

We talk a great deal about fulfilling our potential.

Usually we mean developing abilities into something more, but sometimes the pressure to realize potential changes our relationship to the thing itself. The moment something becomes a possible business, achievement or public identity, new questions arrive.

Am I good enough? Is this worth the time? Could I monetize it? Should I take a course? What equipment do I need? How does my work compare with everyone else's?

Those aren't inherently bad questions, but notice what has disappeared.

Do I enjoy this?

Pleasure is information too

We've been talking in Field Notes™ about paying attention to what catches our interest, what persists, what surprises us.

Pleasure deserves a place in that conversation. Not because every enjoyable activity reveals our “true self.” Not because an abandoned hobby contains a hidden message about the life we're supposed to be living. Simply because what absorbs us, delights us or makes us lose track of time tells us something about how we experience being alive. That's useful information in a culture that gives considerably more attention to what we accomplish.

Sometimes the question isn't what an interest could become. It's what happens to us while we're doing it.

Someday is a peculiar appointment

Many of us have something we're going to return to someday. When work settles down. When we retire. When we have more space. When the children are older. When we can afford the equipment. When we have time to do it properly.

The problem with “properly” is that it raises the admission price. Perhaps you don't need three uninterrupted hours to paint. Perhaps you need twenty minutes and some paint. Perhaps you don't need to become fluent in French. Perhaps you enjoy learning French. Perhaps you don't need to write the book. Perhaps you'd like to write this morning. There's a difference between returning to an old pleasure as a project and simply letting it back into your life.

Some things belong to us more deeply than ambition

Ambition asks: What could I make of this?

There is another question: What does this make possible in me?

Play? Absorption? Curiosity? Beauty? Solitude? Connection? A part of yourself that doesn't get much airtime elsewhere?

Perhaps the hobby you abandoned doesn't need to become important.

Perhaps its importance was never the point.