Dennis Prager Show - Gratitude is Essential for Happiness
Aired: 2020-03-13
Duration: 08:20


=== Happiness Middle Ground (05:30) ===

[00:00:00]  And can you be in a...
[00:00:02]  Because it would imply, if not being unhappy is not the same as happy, that it implies there's an intermediate state.
[00:00:12]  You're not happy, and you're not unhappy.
[00:00:15]  Would you claim to be in that intermediate state?
[00:00:19]  Sometimes I go up.
[00:00:21]  Right.
[00:00:23]  So sometimes you go above that state, but you're almost always in the middle.
[00:00:28]  I see you as happier than that.
[00:00:33]  I'm not joking.
[00:00:35]  Because, I'll tell you why, you have a profoundly meaningful life, which is huge.
[00:00:44]  You're healthy.
[00:00:46]  You have friends who love you.
[00:00:48]  You have a wife who loves you.
[00:00:51]  I mean, you've got a lot going for you, man.
[00:00:54]  You have an engineer who loves you.
[00:00:58]  How many people could say that?
[00:01:01]  Exactly.
[00:01:04]  Yeah.
[00:01:05]  If you ever go down, just think, I have an engineer who loves me.
[00:01:10]  Is that true, Triple G? You love, as you call him, Al?
[00:01:16]  Uncle Al.
[00:01:17]  Yes.
[00:01:18]  That is how you have it in your phone.
[00:01:20]  Okay, you can't get more loving than that.
[00:01:22]  You're not even his biological uncle, and he calls you uncle.
[00:01:26]  You didn't even raise him as a nephew.
[00:01:30]  All right, everybody, welcome to the Happiness Hour.
[00:01:35]  Wow, even if he disowned you.
[00:01:38]  Oh, wow.
[00:01:40]  Wow, you wrinkled my brow, man.
[00:01:44]  That is what I heard in my brain.
[00:01:47]  Wow.
[00:01:48]  Yeah, that's what I heard.
[00:01:49]  You just wrinkled my brain, man.
[00:01:50]  Oh, wrinkle my brain.
[00:01:52]  Yes, you wrinkled my brain, man.
[00:01:54]  That's right.
[00:01:56]  Yes, my friends, I am a believer in happiness.
[00:02:00]  And this is an example with the coronavirus where you just have to work at it.
[00:02:05]  That's exactly right.
[00:02:07]  But I have a big theme today, and I mentioned it in Hour One, which I almost never do.
[00:02:11]  But it's so pertinent.
[00:02:13]  It is so apt.
[00:02:15]  It is so relevant.
[00:02:16]  Give me another synonym for this.
[00:02:19]  Germaine.
[00:02:20]  Yes, thank you.
[00:02:20]  It is so germaine.
[00:02:23]  To the issue that I have to raise this I Really do live or what I preach on the happiness hour.
[00:02:33]  I really do in fact I Lived it and then preached it.
[00:02:38]  That's the interesting thing I Have so wanted to be happy all of my life because I was not happy as a young kid I so wanted to be happy That I worked a massive amount out.
[00:02:53]  And then I started speaking about it in my late 20s to college students.
[00:03:00]  So this has been a long time with me.
[00:03:03]  So I have worked it out.
[00:03:04]  In my case, with regard to happiness, I don't preach what I practice.
[00:03:10]  I practice what I preach.
[00:03:13]  Excuse me.
[00:03:14]  I preach.
[00:03:15]  That's right.
[00:03:16]  I do.
[00:03:16]  I preach what I practice.
[00:03:17]  I'm sorry.
[00:03:18]  I don't just practice what I preach.
[00:03:20]  I'm inverting the point.
[00:03:22]  I preach what I practice.
[00:03:26]  So I have realized so deeply that so much can go wrong in life and has for so vast a percentage of humanity that I am in almost permanent disbelief at how good I have it.
[00:03:48]  Now you'll say, well, you really do have it good.
[00:03:50]  I mean, you know, people will reel off the wonderful things in my life.
[00:03:54]  But there are people who have what I have and they're miserable.
[00:03:59]  And I hardly always had what I have.
[00:04:04]  I didn't always have a happy marriage, for example, I do now.
[00:04:08]  I didn't always have money, to say the least, because I never really pursued it.
[00:04:14]  I pursued influence.
[00:04:18]  I really do believe in what I advocate.
[00:04:22]  Anyway, it just doesn't work that way.
[00:04:26]  Oh, well.
[00:04:27]  You know how many miserable people there are who were successful and so on and so forth.
[00:04:34]  So that's not the reason.
[00:04:36]  The reason that I have been happy is that I have worked at it and I have realized, and this is the theme of the day, I've always realized how much can go wrong.
[00:04:51]  That's why when I have no patience, I truly, I mean, I act like I have patience because it's effective, but I have within me, I have no patience.
[00:05:03]  When students get up at the microphone after my speeches at college campuses, And a young woman gets up and says, oh, you know, as a woman, I'm oppressed.
[00:05:14]  Or a black student gets up as a black, I'm oppressed.

=== Missing Regular Shelves (03:04) ===

[00:05:18]  And I go, oh my God, you have no clue what oppression is.
[00:05:23]  No clue.
[00:05:27]  Don't even, you don't, you shouldn't even be using that word.
[00:05:31]  It's a perversion of the word.
[00:05:37]  Yeah?
[00:05:39]  So now with the coronavirus and people realizing, whoa, you know, I really do miss getting together with friends.
[00:05:47]  I really do miss, you know, going to school or going to work or going to a sporting event or going to a movie, you know.
[00:06:02]  I do miss having regular shelves at the supermarket and not having 45-minute waits to check out because people are buying toilet paper for the apocalypse.
[00:06:16]  That's what we should title it, toilet paper for the apocalypse.
[00:06:22]  See, here's the question, my dear friends.
[00:06:26]  When this subsides, as it will, And people go back to normal.
[00:06:33]  For how long will they appreciate it?
[00:06:38]  Forget they.
[00:06:39]  For how long will you appreciate it?
[00:06:45]  You're asking, how does it even last a day?
[00:06:47]  Well, you have a darker view of humanity than I do, and mine is dark.
[00:06:51]  No, I think it will last a week.
[00:06:54]  But that's all it does.
[00:06:56]  It lasts a week.
[00:06:57]  My point is, it lasts forever.
[00:07:02]  I am unbelievably grateful for the supermarket.
[00:07:08]  It has never left me when I walk into a supermarket.
[00:07:11]  Oh, wow.
[00:07:14]  We are so lucky.
[00:07:17]  Maybe it's because at 21 I was in the Soviet Union where there were no supermarkets.
[00:07:24]  I started out life so early in life.
[00:07:29]  Going to places without supermarkets.
[00:07:33]  The supermarket, by the way, was the thing that most shocked people who got out of the Soviet Union.
[00:07:41]  I have spoken to so many of these people, because I've always been involved in the lives of Russian immigrants, and for them, the old Soviet Union, and I speak Russian, and so the thing that really...
[00:07:58]  Got them.
[00:08:00]  Was the supermarket.
[00:08:02]  So people will be back in the supermarket, back at baseball games, football.
[00:08:07]  Well, football's not canceled because it doesn't exist now.
[00:08:10]  It doesn't exist in March.
[00:08:13]  And then how long will you be grateful?
[00:08:17]  If nothing's horrific, life is terrific.