As our van sped west down Interstate-70, I cozied into the passenger seat with a new book. It was the first time in months I’d read for pleasure and not research. I’d spent the last year working on my first book about the importance of hobbies and had sent the manuscript to my publisher only 14 days before. This vacation was my prize. My family planned to spend over two weeks exploring the national parks of Colorado and enjoying our favorite hobbies: camping, hiking, and backpacking.
We were only two hours from home when a deafening pop struck our ears. “What was that?” my husband asked as all five of us craned our necks toward the windows, searching for a neighboring vehicle with a flat tire. Seconds later, the smell filling our noses told the terrifying truth: The problem wasn’t outside. Pungent black smoke quickly enveloped the inside of our van, and my husband veered toward the shoulder of the interstate. After a hasty exit, I grasped my three children in the grass and watched orange flames lick up behind the tinted glass of our back window. The battery in our camper van had caught fire.
My husband tried all he could to extinguish it, but lithium fires don’t go quietly. Minutes later, the entire van was engulfed in flames. We watched helplessly as all our backpacking supplies, books, games, photography equipment, and the van we had called home for many vacations went up in flames. The irony wasn’t lost on me. After spending a year writing about the beauty of play, our family lost many of the items that make our play possible.
As we walked through the aftermath of this tragedy in the weeks that followed, I noticed our opportunities to play hadn’t been extinguished with that fire. We may not have had all our gear or backpacks any longer, but we still enjoyed hiking together and beholding God’s world in all the ways we could. My husband lost most of his lenses and camera equipment, yet he found a simpler joy in pulling out the first camera he ever owned from the closet. As we played and laughed through another round of Uno gifted to us from a friend, I found myself thanking God for the simplicity of play.
The word simple doesn’t apply to most of the messages we scroll by every day. In our world, play is complicated and highly curated. Hobbies come with a lit candle, clever edits, a particular wardrobe, and a picture-perfect end product. The images and videos flooding our feeds have turned hobbies from activities into aesthetics.
Naturally, achieving the aesthetics requires a lot of merchandise. Interested in painting? This influencer will show you the exact $70 synthetic paintbrushes she uses. Want to try woodworking? You can get a 10 percent discount off a new tool with this TikToker’s coupon code. The total keeps growing as we add all the equipment we think we need for our chosen hobbies. Of course, consumerism doesn’t end with tools. Thanks to Etsy and Amazon, we can slip on any hobby as an identity, filling our carts with “Whisk-taker” T-shirts, hats that say, “I’d rather be gardening,” or Bengals phone cases that proclaim our personalities to the world.
Researchers have shown Americans spend an average of $98 each month on their hobbies, while some reach much higher amounts depending upon the activity. Gen Zers and millennials in particular spend more on hobbies and sometimes classify these purchases as necessities.
In one sense, we can applaud social media for revitalizing play, particularly the “grannycore” hobbies like knitting and gardening that have surged in popularity the last decade. Yet at the same time, we must reckon with the damage this gluttonous form of play leaves in its wake. It’s not enough to enjoy journaling on its own anymore—we need to have the newest pens, the latest stickers, and the trending notebook designs. Seasoned hobbyists quickly become disenchanted with activities they once loved as they fall short of ever-changing benchmarks. There is always one more piece of equipment to buy or one more upgrade for us to reach the coveted aesthetic. One YouTuber noted this excess is so easy to slip into because we “convince ourselves it’s consumption in the name of creation.”
Not only do these complications suck the joy out of play for seasoned hobbyists, but they also seduce beginners into activities they may not even enjoy. One woman admitted she once bought a pricey pottery wheel on an optimistic whim, and the only time she touched it was to relocate it from room to room. Those who don’t dive into debt chasing new hobbies are left timidly standing on the shore in fear that play requires far more than they can give.
We have complicated the simple. Man was not made for the chasing of hobbies but hobbies made for us. God created play as one more good and perfect gift for his children (James 1:17). As he knit together our muscles and cells, he instilled in us deep passions, some of which will appear within our vocations, and some within our play.
We grab a ball of yarn and a pair of needles because our souls long to create, just like our Father. We can’t wait to push offshore in our kayaks because we feel the deep-seated desire to tend to our bodies, to delight in their movement, and to behold the beauty of the world around us. We gravitate toward new Lego sets or 5,000-piece puzzles because our hearts crave the chance to bring order into chaos. These deep joys don’t require affiliate links, carts full of merchandise, or dedicated hobby sheds. As my family found after the fire, we can fulfill them with much less.
We can play as creators with cheap watercolor paints on tables covered in Cheerios. We can wear the shorts we’ve had since college and strengthen our muscles with some garage-sale dumbbells. We can become proficient observers of the birds in our neighborhoods without $1,200 binoculars. It’s not that spending money on hobbies is necessarily bad. No doubt certain hobbies require a greater investment and specialized equipment. It’s a little hard to water-ski without a boat. The goal isn’t a pendulum swing to asceticism but a recognition that the joy of play is inherent to the humble delight of the process. When we ground our play this way, we are freed to stop chasing an aesthetic with every new upgrade or accessory. We are freed from fear of how we will do it wrong. We can simply play.
It’s been almost two years since we watched our van and belongings burn. Thanks to insurance, we’ve been replacing most of our equipment little by little. I’ve found each purchase comes with a much lighter grip. Could I lose it again? I’m distinctly aware that I could. Yet we’ll keep on playing. We’ll keep delighting in the passions God has placed within us and receive the joy of play in all the ways we can. We were created to play in this world—and that truth doesn’t have to be complicated.
Brianna Lambert is the author of Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows us Spiritually. She writes on staff for Gospel-Centered Discipleship and has contributed to The Gospel Coalition, Mere Orthodoxy, and Common Good. You can read more of her writing on Substack.
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