Rational Recreation
Sweet is rest after labour; sweeter is ease .otter pain; and both these sweets are part of the order of nature. After a spell of work there must naturally follow an interval of rest and relaxation, for no human being can keep working night and day without pause or interruption. This is a question on which all are in agreement; but it is the other question, how these intervals of rest are to be spent, that gives rise to much difference of opinion. Work is work to all mankind, it means keeping busy, toiling, sweating, mentally or manually, or in both ways; but what does rest mean ? It means absence of work, no doubt; but it must mean some sort of employment, if the interval is not devoted absolutely to sleep. What the proper employment should be for our intervals of rest, is a question well worth thinking about. For it is just possible that by employing our hours of rest in the wrong way we might defeat the very end for which rest is given and taken—viz. to make use more fit, or at least equally fit, for the next spell of work. It is imperative therefore that the mode in which we while away our hours of recreation should be rational
So far, opinion will be found unanimous. It is at the next step that differences arise. What is rational recreation ? That is the crux of the whole question. Men differ widely in their tastes and temperaments, and seek recreation in widely different ways. One thing is, however, certain in the midst of all this difference—that recreation does not mean indolence or supine inactivity. Unfortunately that is the easiest mode of taking rest known to our people. The natural tendency of man is towards idleness; after a period of hard work the body instinctively seeks rest in inactivity; but inactivity, if indulged in without care, has a sure tendency to beget a desire for more, and to prolong itself beyond its proper limit, with the result that instead of refreshing us, the rest deadens our faculties, and makes further work exceedingly distasteful. Rest therefore should never mean laziness. The hours of sleep are enough in that way.
Recreation should be sought not from total absence of work, but from a welcome change of occupation; and in order that a change of occupation may be a welcome one, a man should have some pursuit, in addition to his regular work, in which he takes a real interest, and to which he may turn with pleasure whenever he is free from the pressing duties of his ordinary calling. Such a pursuit is sometimes called a ‘hobby’. But it is essential that our hobbies should be not merely objects of absorbing interest, but also things of living utility. There is no end to hobbies that are both delightful and useful. Amateur gardening is one; photography is another; music, painting, poetry, offer a third group of alternative choices; stamp-collecting is a very fashionable one in these days; collecting match-box labels is another hobby coming into vogue among cultured people; athletic games are a well-known mode of recreation; indoor games, like chess, cards, dice, ping-pong, are often the resort of more lazily-inclined people, including the Indian aristocracy; riding, hunting, fishing, are also not unknown among Indian gentlemen. All these hobbies are good in their own way, but they are not equally easy for all. Gardening is possible only to those who own a garden; to expect a man to take his pleasure by digging another man’s garden is to expect too much. Riding similarly presupposes a wealthy state, in that it necessitates the owning of a horse, which is not within the means of every one, and as for hiring a horse or borrowing one, that is a far-fetched conceit in the case of most people who are after a hobby. Athletic games are excellent, and should be the hobby of all those whose main occupation is of a sedentary nature. But some people have no liking for them, and others shun them for what they regard as the rough ways of playing them. Others think that athletic games are too violent a form of hobby, or that they involve the expenditure of more time than some people have at their disposal to employ for the sake of recreation. Some people also think that athletic games are so fatiguing that they themselves need recreation after them. Besides this, athletic games cannot be played alone : you need teams and athletic gear, and well-kept playgrounds, and organisation : and there are not everywhere to be had. The cultivation of the fine arts is a fine hobby indeed; but an exceedingly difficult one. Learning music is not simply cooing to yourself in the solitude of a grove; nor can painting be done with the aid of self-instruction always; and as for poetry, a poet is born, not made.
Every mode of recreation has, as we see, difficulties connected with it. But is there no recreation that is equally easy for all, available at all times, suited to all tastes, alike pleasurable and profitable ? Every one will at once answer, “Yes, there is,” and he will name his own hobby as the ideal one. For every one does regard his own hobby as the only good one in the world; and he has a tendency also to look down upon the hobbies of other people, and to regard them as more or less irrational modes of recreation. Hence perhaps the best thing would be not to specify any particular modes of recreation as rational, but only to name those that are positively harmful. To this category belong all those modes of recreation that are only vicious indulgence in disguise. Going to see a play is harmless enough in itself, but in India unfortunately it is not always a cultured form of pleasure-seeking, nor is it always an innocent form especially in some of its later phases. The Indian stage needs some reforms, before the theatre can become an attractive form of recreation to the best type of men. But the theatre is a blessing as compared with a Nautch party, which no educated man would regard as a source of recreation at all. Indoor games, similarly, may afford pleasure or needful relaxation from the strain of work, but they are a very lazy way of employing time, and suit only the aged and the illiterate. Be-sides this, they deprive one of the benefit of fresh air, and in so far are unhealthy. They also sometimes lead to gambling—and the vices that follow in its train.
To educated people, there is one form of recreation, which is not only intensely rational, but also easily available, conducive to health of body as well as health of mind and elevation of the spirit, and that is Reading. It is a great pity that very few of our educated people evince any keen passion for books, while they readily acknowledge the benefits of such a hobby, and warmly recommend it too to their boys and girls. Probably it is the lack of time that accounts for it; but more probably it is the lack of taste. But a taste, if not inborn, can be easily acquired. To cultivate a taste for reading, all that is required is to read. Reading is a pleasure that pays its own way; it is the cheapest mode of recreation. The briefest interval of leisure can be made delightful by it; the obscurest villages offer opportunities for the gratification of this taste; it is a recreation of which the pleasures and the profits are out of all proportion to the amount of time we devote to it; and it is a pleasure which is absolutely innocent, free from the faintest taint of vice or wrong, strong and thrilling while it lasts, and soothing and elevating when it is dropped.
