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Developing Life's Shock Absorbers
00:09:41
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| Happiness Hour is brought to you by Dennis Prager every single week. | |
| No exception. | |
| Not COVID. Not 9-11. | |
| What else can I think of? | |
| Those were the two biggest challenges. | |
| Say it again? | |
| I do the plagues. | |
| I usually do the plagues. | |
| Oh yes, whether they're a vermin or lice or the smiting of the firstborn. | |
| Hey, by the way, isn't that a great word? | |
| Have you ever seen the word smite outside of the Bible? | |
| I think we should reinvigorate the word like in sports. | |
| Yeah, the Dodgers smote the pirates. | |
| Not smited. | |
| Smote. | |
| Very important subject, happiness. | |
| Happy make the world better, the unhappy make it worse. | |
| I have a big subject for you today. | |
| So big, it could be life-changing. | |
| I know I've said that on about 282 occasions, and they've all been true. | |
| My subject today is shock absorbers. | |
| There's an interesting moment in my life when Dr. Stephen Marmer, the professor of psychiatry at UCLA, who's periodically on the show and has done a number of PragerU videos, at some point, and I think it was on the air, said to me, you, Dennis, have very good shock absorbers. | |
| And he's known me for 30 years. | |
| He knows me well and is a psychiatrist. | |
| And he is right. | |
| So I'd like to offer you some thoughts on shock absorbers. | |
| One, I assume to a certain extent they're built in. | |
| And some people have, like anything else, they may be partially built in and partially absent by your nature. | |
| Just like a musical ability is built in, but even if you don't have great musical ability, you can play an instrument. | |
| Virtually every human can learn to play an instrument, and nicely. | |
| But obviously some will become great. | |
| Okay, so whether your nature has shock absorbers or not, I have some advice. | |
| Life gives you shocks. | |
| Life produces shocks. | |
| So one way of looking at how one deals with life and the happiness level possible to attain is how do you deal with the shocks of life? | |
| I know nobody Who has been exempt from shocks? | |
| Do you? | |
| It seems like there might be people who are, when you think of, you know, maybe the super rich. | |
| But you don't know. | |
| We don't know their lives. | |
| And then you find out, oh, they lost a child through a drug overdose. | |
| Or they have no relationship with a child. | |
| Any number of possible things. | |
| Shock. | |
| So you need shock absorbers. | |
| So here is my biggest piece of advice. | |
| Most people develop shock absorbers after the shock. | |
| The trick is to develop shock absorbers before the shock. | |
| Right? | |
| Your car has shock absorbers. | |
| It doesn't wait until it goes over a bump. | |
| One of those often moronic speed bumps. | |
| When they build those speed bumps, by the way, do they think about fire trucks? | |
| And how it slows them down or makes... | |
| Their ride that much more difficult. | |
| But anyway, so think of the speed bump. | |
| If your car has no shock absorbers, unless you're going two miles per hour, some people do, usually the ones with the most expensive cars, you will feel the shock tremendously. | |
| So you have to put in the car shock absorbers before they get to the speed bumps. | |
| What are some shock absorbers in advance? | |
| Believe it or not, I believe that they are largely philosophical. | |
| Well, let me put it to you this way. | |
| That is how I have built my shock absorbers. | |
| And given what Dr. Marmer said to me, which I know to be true, that I have good shock absorbers, I'd like to tell you what has helped me develop mine. | |
| They're in, to a certain extent, they're in my book on happiness. | |
| Happiness is a serious problem. | |
| Which I wrote now, let's see, about 22 years ago. | |
| Happiness is a permanent subject. | |
| The book is not in any way dated. | |
| Anyway, I write all my books not to be dated. | |
| So here's an example of a way to... | |
| I knew from a very early age that life will not be easy. | |
| That I and everyone else will get real speed bumps in our lives. | |
| One of the worst things about Shocks is that they shock you. | |
| There are like two definitions in the shock absorbers, in the shock word. | |
| So people are surprised. | |
| For example, I'll give you a religious example, and I have to say this is sad to me because I'm religious. | |
| And this is true for Jews and Christians. | |
| The two groups I know best. | |
| And that is, there are people who, religious people, who expect that given their fervent and honest and sincere and deep religiosity, that will protect them from shocks. | |
| Then they get one, and they're less prepared than secular people. | |
| I don't think secular people... | |
| Tend to walk around thinking that they will not get shocked. | |
| That they are protected somehow. | |
| So they have to develop ways of protecting themselves. | |
| Whereas the religious very often think they won't even get the shock. | |
| I'm religious. | |
| I won't get cancer. | |
| I'm religious. | |
| I won't lose a child. | |
| And you just fill in the rest of the sentence after the words, I'm religious. | |
| Those are people who not only do not develop shock absorbers, they open themselves up to terrible pain from the bumps of life. | |
| I have never, and anyone who's listened to me knows my deep commitment to God and to religion, but I have never thought for a moment that God will protect me more than the next guy from a drunk driver or cancer. | |
| He might, but I have no reason to believe that he would. | |
| And those who believe that, how do you account for the next guy having tragedy in his or her life? | |
| They weren't religious enough? | |
| God ignored them? | |
| Developing shock absorbers is the topic. | |
| I will continue and take your calls. | |