How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

be good company for yourself when the necessity arises immeasurably facilitates the attainment of happiness. Hobbies as Old Age Insurance In a sense, the construction of a world of interest in creative activities, hobbies, and avocations is the most certain insurance against the mental depression that so commonly occurs with old age or sickness. Occasionally we hear that someone has been confined to his bed for months by some serious illness, only to discover artistic or literary interests of whose existence he was completely unaware. Willard Huntington Wright, the brilliant writer of the “ S. S. Van Dine ” detective stories, developed his technique while suffering from a nervous breakdown. Had he developed his detective-story technique as a counterpoise to his more serious studies, earlier in his life, he might not have been compelled to suffer his breakdown. One of my patients, a millionaire many times over, came to this country a ragged urchin from Austria, and was compelled to spend his childhood selling papers in order to support his entire family. This man suffered a series of depressions when, at the age of 61, he was compelled to retire from an active business which had been his life’s work. He had been a fighter all his life, a good fighter, and a successful one, but in the course of his fighting he had never learned the art of being at peace except in battle harness. When his age compelled him to retire from the active field of battle, he was forced to admit his first defeat. Spare time, the cross of the retired business man who has not developed some avoca¬ tion, forced this man whom no adversary had ever bested to his knees. In full physical and mental vigour, the passive enjoyments of travel or golf were inadequate stimuli. I prescribed the Boy Scouts as a socially con¬ structive avocation, which represented a psychologically valid compensation for his own poverty-stricken, pleasure¬ less childhood. He became not only an important financial backer of this movement, but spent four evenings a week,