On Mother’s Day, my wife, Kelly, celebrated six years as a mom not by going to brunch or being given a day “off” from maternal duties, but by running her first 5K footrace with nearly 300 other women to help support a local charity.

My wife is many things, but until that moment had never considered herself a runner. Having logged a personal best of two miles on an indoor treadmill, she was a little unsure about how she would fare running more than three miles on an outdoor course with asphalt under her feet instead of a speeding rubber mat. The prospect of running farther than she ever had in one shot weighed a bit on her, too.

Not surprisingly (to me, at least) she excelled, crossing the finish line with a respectable time of 34:53 and at no point collapsing or begging to be carried from the course. Naturally, I was overjoyed – as well as immensely proud – that she finished and that she felt good enough about her performance to consider another race in just two weeks.

But what impressed me most was that at 35, she was willing to take on a challenge otherwise foreign to her and embark on it with few real reservations. In the process, she’s making new acquaintances and is providing for herself an activity she can pursue outside of her roles as employee, mother and wife.

Traditionally, such activities have been called hobbies. But as someone who has always chafed against the boxes that others like to put us in and the activities people expect us to enjoy, I’ve always felt that the term “hobby” diminished the pursuits we enjoy outside of our “day jobs.”

Whether involving athletics, the arts or intellectual endeavors, these are the things that make us whole persons rather than just workers bees buzzing about a corporate hive. For many of us, it is in these activities, rather than in what we do to earn money, that we see our true selves and in which our souls are revealed.

Our work is rarely an all-consuming thing, and in the 21st century we are fortunate to have an unprecedented amount of free and flexible time to enjoy the things that make us truly happy. The trick is learning to find them and realize they are just as important as - if not more important than - the things that earn us money.