{"id":230499,"date":"2023-03-20T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=230499"},"modified":"2023-02-28T05:16:27","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T05:16:27","slug":"bertrand-russell-on-the-secret-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/03\/bertrand-russell-on-the-secret-of-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cLet your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my darkest hours, what has saved me again and again is some action of unselfing<\/a> \u2014 some instinctive wakefulness to an aspect of the world other than myself: a helping hand extended to someone else\u2019s struggle, the dazzling galaxy just discovered millions of lightyears away, the cardinal trembling in the tree outside my window. We know this by its mirror-image \u2014 to contact happiness of any kind is \u201cto be dissolved into something complete and great,\u201d<\/a> something beyond the bruising boundaries of the ego. The attainment of happiness is then less a matter of pursuit than of surrender \u2014 to the world\u2019s wonder, ready as it comes.<\/p>\n

That is what the Nobel-winning philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell<\/strong> (May 18, 1872\u2013February 2, 1970) explores in The Conquest of Happiness<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the 1930 classic that gave us his increasingly urgent wisdom on the vital role of boredom in flourishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Bertrand Russell<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Russell writes:<\/p>\n

The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man*<\/a> who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, the Council of Trent, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a sentiment he would expand in his final years as he contemplated what makes a fulfilling life<\/a>, he adds:<\/p>\n

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Couple this fragment of the wholly nourishing The Conquest of Happiness<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with Kurt Vonnegut on the secret of happiness<\/a>, then revisit Russell on the key to the good life<\/a>, how to heal a divided world<\/a>, and his magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech about the four desires driving all human behavior<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> My name is Maria Popova<\/a> \u2014 a reader, a wonderer, and a lover of reality who makes sense of the world and herself through the essential inner dialogue that is the act of writing. <\/em>The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the unbearable name Brain Pickings<\/a> for its first 15 years) is my one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a decent, inspired, substantive life of purpose and gladness. Founded in 2006 as a weekly email to seven friends, eventually brought online and now included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive, it is a record of my own becoming as a person \u2014 intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically \u2014 drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling. A private inquiry irradiated by the ultimate question, the great quickening of wonderment that binds us all: What <\/em>is<\/em> all this? (More<\/a>\u2026) <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 themarginalian.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":230500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[122,1177,1170,308,2237],"class_list":["post-230499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-bertrand-russell","tag-inspirational","tag-life","tag-philosophy","tag-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230501,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230499\/revisions\/230501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}