Introduction
In my journey through building hobbies I have found myself, to have a rather sizable amount of different hobbies that I enjoy spending my time working on. Nonetheless each one of those changing hobbies I have undertaken for a purpose of one day gaining something from, for that would be a wrong motivation. By gain, I am referring to the profit motive. To gain money, for that would have destroyed any intrinsic passion I might have for those hobbies. Thus the whole sense of having fun would have but perished as I would feel obligated to perform the hobby.
This got me thinking, on the true meaning of power. It is an abstract sense, Nietzsche argued each one of us had an underlying will for power. What he meant by the statement was vague and left for interpretation, however a noticeable connection was in his worship of art and creativity. Thus a connection I have made between power and creativity was made.
Power in the hobby
In its purest sense, a power would be an ability to perform a task, and perform it to one’s own liking. Taking this sort of understanding of what I mean when I say ‘power’ I do not mean a political ‘power’ that would be a debate for another time. Thus I found myself thinking that it be impossible to find power in instrumentalizing one’s own work for some other purposes. For then your goal is not to perform that task itself. Power has to lie in performing the task for its own sake.
If I attempt to describe it to relation to learning a language, it could be described as not learning it for the sake of some other purpose, but to focus on the very craft of learning the language, and thus enjoying the very process of learning. As the popular saying goes „it is not about the destination it is about the journey.“ That saying could not be more true, one learns the best once they are able to enjoy the process itself, thus appreciate the language they have undertaken to studying.
Thus the real power lies in how much one focuses on the learning process rather than the factors outside of them. This equally applies to the whole ethos of hobbies, as one to enjoy the hobby has to focus on the very acts that the hobby has. For it would be quite a difficult task to maintain a hobby that one does not enjoy. This post would not focus as so much on the underlying principles of finding a hobby or motivations for having a hobby, rather maintaining a hobby with utmost care and method.
Will of the hobby
As such the second half of Nietzsche’s concepts leads me to the Will, it in a sense refers to how strong our motivation or desire for something to do actually are. This then marks a problem, for if one’s motivations for learning a language lay weak such as learning Japanese for the sole purpose of watching anime without subtitles, that person would not have enough strong a will to persevere with the amount of work at hand needed to actually learn the language. However a person with the stronger motivation, such as learning a language for a loved one, this one has stronger will inside of their heart, that pushes them through, however even that person with their newly found appreciation for a language of their lover would despite their best of efforts at a certain point of fluency give up on the hobby, to focus more on their real motivation their lover.
This leads me to the important distinction to make, in both of these cases the person had a motivation factor that lie external to the hobby they had undertaken. Although there lies a great amount of back and forth dialogue between their motivation and their hobby. For the focus on this blog, where they have failed, was that they worked not from the position of connecting the two hobbies, such as anime-language learning, and lover-language learning on an equal basis. By outweighing the one hobby over another hobby and making it dependent on the joy one gets from the primary one they have set their sights in a tunnel vision. For the hobby to make sense in both of these cases, one would need to take it for watching anime without subtitles as a consequence of undertaking their hobby not a dependence for it. Likewise for the lover, one needs to enjoy in being able to understand the language itself which allows them to communicate with their partner.
Thus their will had been diminished from the start, for one to be able to persist with a higher will towards their own hobby they need to be able to dedicate the necessary amount of appreciation if they are so willing to undertake a new challenge of having a secondary hobby. This means that one cannot make tantalizing statements where they show the hobby being a chore rather than an enjoyable process. However none of what I have spoken negates that having a secondary hobby is inherently wrong to have, for it is quite a worthy pursuit out of dedication and proclamation of love to another to undertake a study of their own language. What I am saying here is whether the will can actually persist for long enough if one does also not learn to love the activity they are tasked to do.
Having learned to love the hobby we have undertaken to study, one has the necessary amount of motivation to be able to persist through the hardships and tribulation to persist with their challenges they are yet to overcome. An important lesson to be taken here, is that one will face in any hobby depths and hardships with their lack of skill or knowledge needed to progress. It is but a fact of life, for if one has not enough power needed to complete a task, one will fail. This mere tribulation should not discourage the undertakers of the challenge, for it is but a trial that only the most worthy shall pass and meet what is on the other side.
Such hardships are not mere flaws of having a lack of power, they are but testaments of the will that you possess if you lack the necessary amount of will once the downward spiral has begun you are bound to give it up. It is not a real tragedy to the hobby, for its knowledge will only be shown to the most willing to dedicate themselves to it. For if the person faced with a challenging task at hand be it a piece of art that requires a large amount of time to paint or a music with a cord they struggle to produce then immediately chooses to distract themselves with a social media post. Would be that they never were worthy enough to possess such knowledge in the first place, they have not dedicated themselves hard enough to be considered of being thought such knowledge.
Listening to what the hobby has to say
The way I have taken to understand the hobby or a craft as a being in itself that converses with the one doing it. If only more were willing to listen to what it had to say, not attempting to mold it to how they see fit, but letting it be the one guiding them, they would be more than surprised at the paths where the hobby leads them. This requires immense practice and dedication from their part. Thus every hobby holds an elimination system in place, that has its own strict rules that get even stricter the more you advance your expertise.
Only those who are worthy of wielding the sword are the one’s who possess it, is the knight’s codex for a reason. For those unworthy, witty-full and impulsive ones do not hold the amount of precision and dedication to be yet worthy to wield it. That is not to exclude such people from hobbies, for each hobby has its own internal logic that it abides by, for there is a hobby where the most witty-full and impulsive ones thrive the most.
As such each craft can be seen as having an honour attached to them. The real spirit of being the most dedicated to the craft, having practiced it for years upon years, being able to live and breathe for its own sake. Is what a true dedication to the craft itself means. One does not merely instrumentalize it for the sake of achieving other goals, for the craft feels it, is but visible when the wielder of the sword is unworthy yet nonetheless still wields it. Be it motivations for power, or for honor or their very own pride, each one wields it slightly differently.
Where the will to hold the hobby fails
Having learned such a fact one might immediately jump at the idea to dedicate an enormous amount of time learning the hobby discarding everything else inside of their life. This ideal although right in the spirit in execution will fail miserably. For if we attempt at a task of learning a language for 8 hours each day in order to learn it faster which although questionable motivations, is a death sentence for a beginner. There is no amount of will that will get you out of such a grave, the burnout has been etched deep into stone before even undertaking such a challenge. For one has to first pass through tests and tribulations that the craft possesses. It is better to take small victories to boost morale on the field we are fighting for. There are many hard battles to be fought, one ought to take time to reflect on what they had learned not merely act.
This ensures the wielder to dedicate portions no matter how small each day to talk to their craft to listen to what it has to say to you. Once you learn something new, take the time to journal and to reflect. The hobby will thank you in advance.
Having achieved a balance between the will and power, as well as action and reflection one then can in their very dedication seek to do the very hobby they have set their minds to. Remember one does not need to hold a singular hobby to achieve this, for knowledge learned in another can be analogues to the next one. One must not be afraid of experimentation and proceed fearlessly into the challenging awaiting.