Avocation
The third reason somewhat resembles the second in that it typically occurs outside our regular work life—that is why it is called avocational. However, unlike the autotelic activities of the second form of recreation, the avocational activities in which people engage have an external goal or purpose. We engage in these activities in order to achieve something that is important for us. There is a certain outcome related to an important project you are undertaking such as gardening or building a new tree house for your kids. One of my clients many years ago was a prestigious research firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. This organization conducted a survey of its employees to determine what type of training program they would find most desirable. The winner was a write-in suggestion: the respondents (mostly scientists) wanted woodworking classes. Their advocational interests (wood crafting) trumped their vocational interests (doing science).
While many avocational (and recreational) activities don’t require much physical movement, there certainly are activities that provide the health benefits of exercise along with the achievement of other non-health related goals. The beautiful flower bed and handsome handcrafted stool are sources of great pride and aesthetic enjoyment—and they require us to exert some physical energy. Other kinds of avocational activities require even more movement. We can volunteer to manage our daughter’s soccer team or teach a class on the martial arts. The project we have undertaken to repaint our living room walls or build a shed to house our riding mower requires important (though temporary) physical action. It is all about finding something to do that provides exercise while yielding an outcome that is important for us to achieve.
Vocation
The fourth reason takes us back to where we began: some of us still must be physically active in the job for which we are being paid (or produces income if we are independent contractors and are working in a skillful and efficient manner). The outcome of our physical activity is not just something that is important for us—it is the work we are doing to make a living as someone who hauls up lobster, mends dresses, repairs heating systems, cleans homes, lays rugs or installs new kitchen counters. We engage in the business of commercial fishing, the occupation of farming, or the profession of plumbing. As one of the commentators on television put it several years ago, these are the folks that shower at the end of a day of hard work rather than in the morning before work begins.
For the men and women who do this kind of “exercise”, the prospect of purchasing and making extensive use of an exercise machine or paying for membership in a gym may seem to be a bit silly or elitist: if you were doing “real work” then you wouldn’t need to pay for your physical labor. It must seem strange to agricultural workers that there is a Zen-based retreat site in California where people pay quite a bit of money to tend the extensive gardens located at this site (the produce from these gardens being featured at a noted vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco). What might be overlooked is the probability that the weekend tending of Zen gardens is an avocational choice for these gardeners – and might even yield some “flow” for those working in the gardens.
