Dennis Prager Show - You're as Happy as You Choose to be...
Aired: 2020-12-05
Duration: 09:54


=== Everything Is a Choice (09:25) ===

[00:00:00]  My friends, every Friday since 1999, which when you think of it, was just 30 years after 1969. The reason for the silence is I sometimes like to read my engineer's face.
[00:00:23]  That's it, and I read him perfectly as he thought...
[00:00:29]  What?
[00:00:30]  That was what went through his mind.
[00:00:32]  The word...
[00:00:33]  What?
[00:00:36]  Since 1999 we've been doing this because they happy make the world better.
[00:00:40]  Boy, have you ever been more convinced?
[00:00:46]  I don't throw out lines.
[00:00:48]  I may be wrong, but I don't throw them out easily.
[00:00:50]  This is a lifetime of thought that has gone into these.
[00:00:55]  Lines, like the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
[00:00:57]  That's a lifetime of thought.
[00:01:00]  Everything the left touches, it damages, ruins.
[00:01:04]  It's a lifetime of thought.
[00:01:08]  And the happy make the world better?
[00:01:12]  That's, again, the product of a lifetime of thought.
[00:01:17]  Moral obligation to others not to be in bad moods.
[00:01:22]  These things have caught on with a lot of people.
[00:01:27]  Yes, you have a choice.
[00:01:29]  Most people have a choice.
[00:01:32]  And whether to be happy or not.
[00:01:35]  If Abraham Lincoln could choose...
[00:01:38]  You know, we always say Lincoln said...
[00:01:41]  What is it?
[00:01:42]  What do we say?
[00:01:42]  Lincoln said...
[00:01:44]  People should choose happiness.
[00:01:47]  I don't remember.
[00:01:48]  What do we quote Lincoln as saying?
[00:01:52]  Sorry?
[00:01:53]  You're as happy as you choose to be.
[00:01:54]  Thank you.
[00:01:55]  It's actually...
[00:01:57]  Did you ever see the actual...
[00:01:58]  That's almost right.
[00:02:02]  Lincoln on happiness.
[00:02:04]  Let me see what comes up here.
[00:02:06]  It's actually...
[00:02:07]  Here it is.
[00:02:08]  Perfect.
[00:02:09]  I got it.
[00:02:09]  Ready?
[00:02:10]  Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
[00:02:17]  It's such a folksy way of putting it.
[00:02:20]  I love it.
[00:02:21]  Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
[00:02:28]  One of the great lessons of life, and one that I bring to you often, but I don't think often enough, everything is a choice.
[00:02:41]  That's the amazing thing.
[00:02:45]  You can choose whether to be scared.
[00:02:48]  You can choose whether to marry.
[00:02:51]  You can choose whether to have children.
[00:02:53]  Now, obviously, there are times in life where you can't surmount a physical barrier.
[00:02:59]  I live in the same world as you do.
[00:03:02]  I'm aware of that.
[00:03:03]  But you have to give generalizable rules or life has no wisdom to give you.
[00:03:10]  Generalizations are wisdom.
[00:03:13]  If they're wrong, they're not wisdom.
[00:03:18]  Choose.
[00:03:19]  You make a choice.
[00:03:23]  Choose to be happy.
[00:03:25]  Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
[00:03:29]  And he led a very difficult life.
[00:03:32]  He lost two sons, correct?
[00:03:35]  I mean, he had a particular...
[00:03:37]  Almost love affair, as it were, in the best sense of the word, with one of his sons, but I think he lost two.
[00:03:44]  His wife was manic depressive.
[00:03:46]  That was not what they said in those days, because that's not a term that they would have used in the 19th century.
[00:03:55]  And his country, you think things are awful now, and they are, but think about the Civil War.
[00:04:06]  600, 700,000 dead.
[00:04:10]  You realize how many were horribly wounded and maimed and blinded and brain damaged?
[00:04:19]  How would you like, I mean, it's a silly way of putting it, imagine having a limb amputated with no anesthetic.
[00:04:31]  What men suffered?
[00:04:34]  All because of slavery.
[00:04:38]  One of the true lies of our time is that slavery was the basis of American economic affluence.
[00:04:51]  Slavery was the basis of poverty.
[00:04:54]  The South was much poorer than the North, precisely because it relied on slavery.
[00:05:04]  Slavery was impoverishing, not enriching.
[00:05:07]  It enriched a couple of people, but not America.
[00:05:12]  Anyway, back to the happiness hour.
[00:05:15]  So, we have a topic today that will hit home for many of you.
[00:05:24]  Childhood and happiness.
[00:05:28]  And there are many ways I could phrase the topic.
[00:05:32]  But I will keep it within the element of choice, ultimately.
[00:05:36]  Does an unhappy childhood inevitably mean an unhappy adulthood?
[00:05:44]  That's...
[00:05:44]  And, by the way, I have raised this issue, but not in a while.
[00:05:49]  And I haven't heard others raise this issue.
[00:05:51]  It doesn't mean it hasn't.
[00:05:53]  Does a happy childhood ensure a happy adulthood?
[00:06:02]  There's a very interesting question.
[00:06:04]  I don't believe a happy childhood ensures a happy adulthood, and I don't believe an unhappy childhood ensures an unhappy adulthood.
[00:06:14]  Alright?
[00:06:18]  That's what I have seen in life.
[00:06:21]  But the bigger point, or at least as big a point, is back to...
[00:06:28]  Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
[00:06:33]  If you had an unhappy childhood, you choose whether to allow it to make you miserable the rest of your life.
[00:06:40]  That's the happiness point on the happiness hour.
[00:06:47]  One of the horrible messages of the well-educated, who are almost always fools, not always, But almost, let's put it this way.
[00:07:00]  Most fools are well-educated.
[00:07:02]  Most well-educated are fools.
[00:07:06]  That's just the way it works.
[00:07:09]  And the message has been given that life does to you.
[00:07:14]  Like last hour, the poverty causes crime.
[00:07:17]  You didn't choose to be a criminal.
[00:07:19]  Oh no, it's your socioeconomic circumstances that have you rob and even murder.
[00:07:27]  And on occasion, rape.
[00:07:29]  No, no, no, no.
[00:07:29]  You didn't choose it.
[00:07:33]  At what level of income do you choose to be rotten?
[00:07:37]  That's what I'd like to ask people.
[00:07:40]  If you make $40,000 a year or more and you are a rotten human being, did you make that choice?
[00:07:48]  Or is it only at $100,000 a year?
[00:07:55]  And...
[00:07:55]  If happiness is a choice, what isn't?
[00:08:00]  Now, you can't choose to undo certain physical things.
[00:08:05]  If you are a woman who can't give birth, notice that I do restrict birth giving to women.
[00:08:14]  If you are a woman who cannot give birth for physiological reasons, then you can't choose to have a baby.
[00:08:21]  You can't choose to adopt.
[00:08:24]  So you can have a baby, but not biologically.
[00:08:31]  Last night, I conducted a youth orchestra.
[00:08:39]  These kids were so...
[00:08:40]  It was just the string sections.
[00:08:43]  A lot of the winds are afraid to show up because they've been told you'll pass COVID. As if a 16-year-old.
[00:08:49]  These were high school kids, by and large.
[00:08:53]  And one of the violinists was a black girl who was particularly charming and particularly ebullient and particularly vivacious, not to mention a good violinist, as they all were.
[00:09:08]  So she asked, oh, you know, she's a big fan of PragerU, and she wanted to get a selfie with me, and I did with, I think, almost all of the members of the orchestra.

=== Adopted Lives (00:43) ===

[00:09:22]  And so I asked her, so where are you from?
[00:09:25]  And she told me, name of a city in Southern California.
[00:09:31]  And I said, and where are your parents from?
[00:09:34]  And she said, well, I'm adopted.
[00:09:38]  And she said it as matter-of-factly as I would say to you, you know, I'm in the mood for lunch.
[00:09:47]  And I said to her, oh, I just want you to know I haven't...
[00:09:50]  One of my sons is adopted, and I don't think blood matters at all.