You Already Have What Most People Wait All Year For

The crossword puzzle. Your garden. Golf. The boxes of coins. A book face-down on the arm of the chair. Almost everybody has something they enjoy doing pretty regularly.

They're fun, give a bit of pleasure and are a pleasant diversion from the things that actually have to be done.

Even the word says so. Hobby. Something to keep your hands and mind busy. A relaxing way to pass the time.

Turns out, that statement is a considerable underestimate of the true value of hobbies.

A research study asked ninety-three thousand people past sixty-five one question — do you have a hobby, yes or no — and the ones who said yes were doing better four to eight years later than the group who said no. Fewer depressive symptoms. Better health, by their own account. More happiness. More satisfaction with life.

Nobody was asked what the hobby was. Arts, crafts, reading, games, sport, gardening, volunteering, a club on a Tuesday — it all counted the same.

Which leaves a good question sitting there. How does something you do for an hour on Thursday reach into your health four years later?

The answer turned up somewhere else entirely, in a study about vacations.

More than fifteen hundred people were followed in the months before a trip and the weeks after it. The ones who had booked something were happier than the ones going nowhere — and, surprisingly, they were happier before they ever left.

The happiness was in the looking forward — the anticipation of doing something.

And a vacation comes once or twice a year and often needs an airport. A hobby waiting in the other room asks for neither, and it's there any day you want it.

So anticipation is a real key to feeling happy. And we thought: wow. The joy in a project or a pastime was never only about the hour we spent doing it. It was every hour before it — the next chapter waiting, the one we get to look forward to again and again.

Most things that pull us toward tomorrow are owed to somebody. Appointments, forms, the call that has to be returned. They pull the way a deadline pulls, which is to say they push.

A hobby pulls because you want it to, and that is the whole of its power. Nobody is waiting on it. Nothing terrible happens if you never touch it again.

Yes, your interest in a particular pastime can fade. It happens all the time, and you move on to something else that interests you more.

And therein lies the power of hobbies. Even though there may be materials you spent money on and countless hours you put into it, because you wanted to do them, you gained measurable benefits. Not by the doing. Not by finishing. By having something you looked forward to the next day.

So the next time someone asks — kindly, with real interest — have you finished that sweater yet? If it's one of those things you lost interest in and it's sitting unfinished in the closet, it served you well while you enjoyed it. That's what a hobby is supposed to do. Be something to look forward to. Be fun. Bring a bit of pleasure. Be a diversion from the things that actually have to be done.

And that's it. Hobbies bring happiness to your life because they're the something on the other side of tonight worth getting to.