| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Is This Year Your Happiest?
00:07:35
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|
| You with me on that, living martyr? | |
| Do you know anybody who would say this has been their happiest year? | |
| 2020-2021. | |
| 2020-2021. | |
| That's a good one. | |
| Joe Biden. | |
| That's right. | |
| That's a very good response. | |
| But I don't know him personally. | |
| I don't know anybody personally who would say this was their happiest year. | |
| Maybe we should do that. | |
| I think it's worth exploring. | |
| Has this past year affected your happiness? | |
| 1-8 Prager 776. It has affected mine. | |
| How do you like that? | |
| I'll bet you didn't expect me to say that. | |
| You know, this is not some automaton. | |
| Some happiness robot speaking to you every week. | |
| Remember, the name of my book on happiness is, Happiness is a Serious Problem. | |
| Now, if I thought happiness were effortless, I wouldn't have given the book that title, correct? | |
| I work on being happy. | |
| I do have a natural disposition toward it. | |
| Although I was not a happy little kid. | |
| But I work on it, and that is the reason I can help you, whether through the book or through the show, or both, hopefully, with regard to your happiness. | |
| Because I've worked on mine, and I have figured out some things to do. | |
| This year was a challenge. | |
| And I'll tell you why primarily. | |
| It wasn't a challenge primarily because of my life. | |
| My life continued actually more normal than almost any other American's life. | |
| I continued to be with friends from the very beginning. | |
| I did not miss, I don't believe I missed a Friday night Shabbat dinner with a lot of friends, generally about 16. Every Friday night from last March. | |
| I have not worn a mask outdoors. | |
| Ever. | |
| I have been with, when not possible, I've been on Zoom with friends. | |
| My synagogue, which I helped found, plays a great role in my life. | |
| I'm so committed to my weekly service where I teach. | |
| That I will be in Cleveland this weekend. | |
| I'm giving a speech to the Republican Party of Ohio. | |
| And I will actually be giving my talk on the Torah from my hotel room in Cleveland. | |
| That is how committed I am. | |
| And it is no, by the way, it is... | |
| It is mostly selfish. | |
| I tell the people at my synagogue, minion as we call it, I tell them, I come here every week out of selfish reasons. | |
| This helps keep me sane. | |
| I've talked to you anyway about religion and happiness on a number of occasions. | |
| It's not my topic today. | |
| But how do I know about it? | |
| Because I know the role it plays in my own. | |
| There are secular people who are happy. | |
| There's no question about that. | |
| There are unhappy religious people. | |
| But by and large, there's no comparison. | |
| If for no other reason, you have a built-in community if you're religious. | |
| Where's your built-in community if you're secular? | |
| I'll wait for a response. | |
| You know what the secular response to the religious community is? | |
| Government! | |
| What was the great line? | |
| Oh yes, you got that line, Sean? | |
| I called it a Hall of Famer. | |
| The line from President Biden's State of the Union address given to masked, vaccinated people in the House of Representatives. | |
| Nothing quite as wild as the Vice President and her husband, the second husband. | |
| No, no, the second gentleman. | |
| I always get that wrong. | |
| Second gentleman. | |
| Now, if Kamala Harris were married to a woman, I would be the second lady. | |
| Well, we've always had a second lady, so there would be no switcheroo, now that I think of it. | |
| Kissing each other through masks. | |
| And we're supposed to take this woman seriously. | |
| So, my question for you is, this past year, how has it affected your happiness? | |
| And it's very important to work on it. | |
| I worked on it quite a bit. | |
| I mean, I was just discussing this with a living martyr. | |
| This was the first year I did not travel abroad since I was 20 years old. | |
| I did not have a single speech. | |
| Well, I had a couple of speeches on Zoom. | |
| And it was a very different thing... | |
| But the worst for me, I'll tell you, you know what the greatest challenge to my happiness was? | |
| Not those facts. | |
| Very happy at home. | |
| I am very, thank God, happy at home. | |
| Not everybody can say that, I'm well aware. | |
| And I couldn't always say that. | |
| It's just for the record. | |
| The greatest challenge to my happiness this year... | |
| Was watching my country wrecked by the left. | |
| Morally, intellectually, and in fact physically. | |
| Watching Minneapolis and Portland and New York and Chicago, among others. | |
| I love this country. | |
| I do believe it's the last best hope. | |
| On Earth, as Abraham Lincoln characterized it, and to see it destroyed from within, an unprecedented thing. | |
| It's like our ambassador to the United Nations. | |
| The only ambassador to the United Nations from any country in the world to crap on her own country. | |
| This is unprecedented. | |
| Of an essentially decent place committing suicide. | |
| And the people voting for the homicide that is creating the suicide. | |
| An amazing thing. | |
| That has in fact, that has challenged my happiness this year. | |
| There's no place to move, my friends. | |