Bertrand Russell: How to Age Well and Live a Meaningful Life

Alright, let’s talk about getting old.

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and historian, was most famous for his contributions to the world of logic and mathematics. However, being the unofficial polymath he was, these subjects weren’t the only ones he gave valuable insight to, with politics, ethics and morality being among the more privileged ones; but occasionally, it also came in the informal manner of offering life advice — as when, encroaching the end of his years (at 81-years-old), he wrote a short essay titled, How to Grow Old.

In his oft spirit of dry wit and determinism, he opened up the essay with a recommendation: “Choose your ancestors well.”

An easy chuckle from his readers. But then there’s the more serious stuff he gets to. Death and dying and how to approach it. From it, and elsewhere in Dr. Russell’s writings, I’ve outlined 3 points that highlight some his best life tips.

#1 — Diversify your interests

In adopting poetry for the purpose of delivering elegant prose, he specifies his advice with the analogy of moving water:

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

For Russell, this idea has an origin in observing a maternal grandmother of his. It was in how she become so occupied in her tasks and hobbies that he remarked (somewhat jokingly), “I do not believe she ever had time to notice she was growing old.”

What Russell was getting at here was the value of staying productive into your old age.

Because in being occupied as a contributing citizen of society, “you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable shortness of your future.”

Elsewhere, he also spoke of the value of diversifying your interests, except this time, the motive was different. It was in coming to terms with the indifference of the universe: that life may smile on you one day and then throw you on the rocks the next:

All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident. For all these reasons the man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.

This segues nicely into Dr. Russell’s next tip for growing old:

2# Don’t expect happiness in the end

Again, because of life’s cold indifference toward humanity, Dr. Russell thought it foolish to fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing it. That is, to give the universe human traits and characterizations. Especially with regard to giving it a purpose driven mindset — where the profit just so happens to fall on you as a fortunate favorite, endowing your existence with all the right stuff to inherit a happily ever after. And that guaranteed.

Dr. Russell put it like this:

Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending.

And so how does Russell propose we live a life full of meaning despite such grim circumstances?

Enter Dr. Russell’s final tip for aging well:

#3 — Keep busy

In is essay, How to Grow Old, he advocates for a life full of interests and activities (as explained in #1 — Diversify your interests), but it’s not so much for the purpose of being a busy-body. To be busy just for the sake of being busy. (Even though this does seem to be a significant remedy to avoid feelings of depression and loneliness).

What Dr. Russell rather means by this is to live a life that justifies your death. As if death is the reward that you’re earning in exchange for your labor to society. A rest that will not be unwelcome.

In turn, Dr. Russell sees how this also frees one from a fear of death:

The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

To say this another way, there should be comfort in knowing that the things you’ve contributed to — the things you’re passionate about — will be left in better, more capable hands — and knowing too that in those hands, you’ve left something you’ve made better than when you found it.

To Dr. Russell, that is a life well lived and a death well earned.