Bertrand Russell: Finding Happiness in the Garden
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 18, 1872
Dearest readers, permit me a philosophical turn today as we celebrate the birthday of the brilliant Bertrand Russell—a Nobel laureate, fierce pacifist, and a man whose mind traversed the starriest heights of mathematics while his heart was often, it seems, down among the cabbages and dahlias.
Russell, author of the acclaimed A History of Western Philosophy
and recipient of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature, spent much ink (and perhaps as much thought) pondering happiness.
“Anything you're good at contributes to happiness,” he observed—words as true in the rose bed as in the library.
Russell never shied from contrasting the learned with the earthy. He made this rather “odd discovery,” as he put it:
“I've made an odd discovery.
Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility.
Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.”
And reflecting on contentment in its purest, greengrocer’s form, he shared:
“The happiest person I have ever known is my gardener, who each day wages war to protect vegetables and flowers from rabbits.”
When anxieties—or preachers—crowded the day, Russell found comfort in the ordinary faith of planting trees:
“I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden.”
A man ever mindful of our planet’s limits and magic, Russell keenly reminded us,
"It's co-existence or no existence."
And for those who seek the cure for life’s malaise, he assures us of the importance of hope:
"Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that but hope and enterprise and change."
So, do take comfort that “the world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
If you find yourself at odds with the philosophers, perhaps it is time to consult the gardener—where contentment, resilience, and hope always dig in and bloom.
