Bertrand Russell said "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
This splendid credo often reminded me of George Bernard Shaw's equally heroic encyclical: 'This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.' Alistair Cooke
That's marvelous. Be a force of Nature, not a feverish selfish little clod. We're clotted with clods, lately, with self-absorbed ruminators who can't or won't look beyond their own short horizon of personal woe.
Cooke's profile of Russell, like other longer bios, betrays plenty of ignoble egoism on the great man's part, plenty of misspent passion and self-indulgence and insensitivity to others. But at his best he knew we're all at our best when we cease ruminating about ourselves, our own disappointments and uncertainties, our personal anxieties etc. etc.
The happiest are those who turn their attention outward, to others and to a diversified and growing tableau of what Russell calls "impersonal interests" and that I'd call pleasures, enthusiasms, and delights... the sweetest music of life is not a tortured soliloquy. That's for clods.
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