Hobbies Help Us To Find Friends
Lost jobs. Companies going out of business. Foreclosures left and right. The stress today, for some of us, is overwhelming. The only thing keeping some of us going is our hobbies. For many of us it is watching television - sporting events, sitcoms, one of the many reality shows, etcetera. And for others, it’s doing some sort of activity such as writing a book software, photography, running, or even bird watching.
It probably goes without saying that it’s almost always more fun to share your hobby with a friend than to do it alone for instance, even a simple solitary activity like running, is a lot more fun when doing it with a friend. And some hobbies, such as tennis, pretty much require that two or more people be involved.
Sixty, seventy, eighty years ago, finding a friend who enjoyed the same things you did was simple, because everyone in a community grew up together. But, as a society, we have all gradually moved away from each other. Childhood friends now live on opposite coasts. It’s not uncommon for family members to see each other only on major holidays because everyone lives so far from each other.
All of this makes finding people who love to do the things that you do harder to find.
But then the Internet came along. And, conversely from keeping people apart from each other, as many social observers once feared, the Internet has instead become a great resource to bring persons of similar interests together. Over the past 8 years, literally thousands of forums have sprung up over the Internet, started by people with an interest or hobby that they loved and showing their members steps to writing a book. And in the course of starting their forum, most of them discovered that they were not alone in their love of that topic.
But furthermore, in what has probably surprised many people, their common interest in their hobby has spilled over and continued into the real world and created authentic off-line friendships. Friendships that in the past would have happened because they would have never met.
This probably just goes to prove how much of a communal animal that man really is and how much we all need each other to make life worth living.
Chris Edwards is webmaster and writer for author related subjects such as writing children’s book.
