Don’t knock peoples’ hobbies until you try them
By: Warren Younger
As a college sophomore, like many other college sophomores, I strive to balance work and play.
And like many college students, I have different things I prefer doing for fun than others.
People like to write music, others like to play sports, and others like to play video games.
Those are what people consider “normal hobbies.”
However we live in a society that is all about appearances, and if someone is doing something out of the ordinary, it becomes news.
What I’m trying to grasp at, is people are ignorant to peoples’ hobbies just because they don’t seem “normal”.
Back in high school, I associated myself with people that liked sports because that’s what I liked.
We would talk sports all the time, discussing the latest games and players.
At lunch time, we would get into heated debates on whether it was Philip Rivers or Tony Romo who was going to lead their team to the Super Bowl.
But there was the other group who sat at the table across from us.
They would also get in heated debates, but not about football players, they would get into debates over Yu-gi-oh.
My crew would always laugh at them because they were playing and talking about a children’s card game.
They were playing Yu-gi-oh in public, at school.
Everyone looked at them like
they were committing a crime. In all reality they were just having fun.
Don’t knock it until you try it.
This was a lesson that took me a while to learn.
Those Yu-gi-oh players at the tables? I see them on a weekly basis at my local card shop.
That’s because I took up Yu-gi-oh as a hobby.
The game is awesome and I love the strategy and nostalgia aspect of it, but it was only after I dropped my bias that I fully appreciated the game.
Those kids at that table were brave enough to do what they liked, not caring about others opinions.
Even now some of the people in my crew play the game, but they would never admit it to anyone because the other groups they associate with don’t play the game.
At least they understand the concept half right.
They are “closet players” because society will tear them apart if they ever admitted to it.
But what if society didn’t care?
What if society actually embraced peoples’ interests instead of shunning them?
That’s a world that I want.
That’s a world that I think everyone wants but they are either too afraid or too ignorant to notice.
The idea of shunning someone about a hobby just because it’s not popular or seems weird is idiotic and I think it’s because people do what society tells them without trying it first hand.
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” you might find something that you didn’t know you liked.
