The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

by Ken Robinson

What’s the purpose of life? This is another good question. It doesn’t seem to bother other species much, but it bothers human beings quite a bit. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell presented this question simply and brilliantly. It’s in three parts, and it’s worth reading twice: “Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once?” You’ll have to forgive the male language here. Russell wrote this a long time ago, when he didn’t know people might frown upon it later. Russell’s three questions capture some of the core puzzles of Western—though not necessarily Eastern—philosophy. Is life essentially accidental and meaningless, or is it as profound and mysterious as Shakespeare’s great tragic hero believed it to be? I’ll come back to Hamlet in a minute. Let’s look first at this idea of our inhabiting a small and unimportant planet.