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Oct. 21, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:05:04
Timeless Wisdom - The Problem of Happiness - Part 5
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Is war in the Middle East the revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible?
The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
So what if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
Dinesh D'Souza's new film, The Dragon's Prophecy, offers new understanding of October 7th.
Israel and radical Islam.
We came back to a land that was largely barren and empty, and we brought it back to life.
And we're going to keep it.
Watch it now.
Or buy the DVD at savethemnow.com.
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
Let me say it once more then, okay?
Very quickly.
Apparently, for a number of people, a significant number of people, guilt constitutes an obstacle to happiness.
They walk around with guilt.
This was brought to my attention by a man last term who had taken this, and I have not incorporated it, and I realize that it's true for many people.
My argument with regard to guilt is as follows.
There are two types of guilt.
One is worth having, one is not worth having.
And they, I believe, should be divided on the following basis.
Necessary guilt is guilt over actions which deliberately hurt another.
The operative words are deliberately and another.
It therefore disqualifies from appropriate guilt, and I will tell you in a moment why I believe we should have appropriate guilt, even in terms of happiness.
It disqualifies a very large area wherein people do have guilt.
Typical guilt is a parental guilt towards children.
Your child grows up and isn't happy, you feel guilty.
You shouldn't feel guilty unless you abused your child.
Most parents, especially I suspect in this room, have not abused their children.
And asking them to call you on the phone frequently does not qualify as psychological abuse.
It cracks me up when I hear from kids, well, I was never abused, but I had psychological abuse.
And I always ask for an example.
Oh, God, if I don't call, they bury me alive.
I don't consider that psychological abuse.
I consider that an absolutely normative Jewish habit.
So it is not, you know, doesn't qualify.
It's very important.
This is a very important one because a lot of you are parents and a lot of you have kids that are growing up or have grown up.
And hopefully many of you will be parents.
So you can then commiserate with your parents.
Which is why parents are happy when their children have children, I am absolutely convinced.
At any rate, A, it is not generally in parental power to make a child happy.
Okay?
That's number one.
Clearly, you have it in your power to ruin a child's life through something dramatic.
Okay?
It's true.
But everybody has troubles with parents.
Everybody.
And if any of you don't, see an analyst.
Then you will realize how many problems you really do have with your parents.
But that's quite all right.
That's quite all right.
Listen, I'm a parent raising a child, raising children.
And I often think, for example, my son, I look at him now, and it is such a lovey-dovey, it really is.
I mean, we have a real, it's like a love affair.
But he's six and three-quarters.
At 26 and three-quarters, he may be saying things to his analyst about me that I would shoot myself if I heard.
Saying things that I may have already done or not done.
What about the not-doves that parents do?
Why didn't my father kiss me that day?
Why didn't my father say this?
Why didn't my mother do this?
So please understand where it is not deliberate, and especially if you said you're sorry, and parents should apologize to children over hurts.
That is true.
It would help a child very much if a parent said that at any age.
Just like a parent never stops seeing the child as a child, the child never stops seeing the parent as a parent.
It just doesn't happen.
Which is amazing as you grow older, because when you're young, you always think it ends.
It doesn't end.
Therefore, it is very important to understand it is not deliberate.
You didn't have control in most instances.
Asking an average human being to be a good parent is like asking an average human being to be a neurosurgeon.
Except the difference is you can actually train the average person to be a neurosurgeon.
And good parenting is untrainable.
I believe that there were things that could be taught.
And incidentally, I have a spectacular book on parenting.
I didn't write, okay, so you could truly trust that it comes from absolutely no vested interest.
It's a book that you'll see in the next issue of ultimate issues in my recommended books.
John Rosmond's six-point plan to raising healthy, happy, healthy children.
It sounds utterly corny.
You would never pick it up.
The man has one extraordinary gift, common sense.
So at any rate, I think that one can learn things.
I don't believe otherwise, but still, understand this.
It's very difficult.
It's just profoundly difficult.
You can be such a great parent with one child, such a failure as a parent with another.
There is a good example of guilt people walk around with.
There is the other guilt, the guilt vis-à-vis parents that children have, you know, wherein you have to take care of them.
Their happiness is your responsibility.
And that's not true.
No child should be made to feel that a parent's happiness is his or her responsibility.
It is an absolutely unfair burden and of issue.
We do not have children to have happiness producers.
That is the wrong reason to have children.
It is dehumanizing of a child to regard a child as a happiness provider to a parent.
Doesn't mean it's a mitzvah to provide unhappiness.
It's a very difficult thin line.
It is.
We do owe our parents something.
I believe that.
The thing that we most owe them is what it says in the Ten Commandments, respect.
We don't owe them love.
We don't owe them happiness.
But they're our parents.
They're not our pals.
They're not our cousins.
They're not our spouses.
They're our parents.
And you don't get too many sets.
He used to say you don't get more than one set, but times have changed.
You don't get more than four sets.
So that common guilt, children parental thing, is an example of where it is not induced intentionally.
Now, if it is, if you just want to walk around hurting a parent or hurting a child, this is a pathologic thing that I won't get into at this time.
Generally speaking, it is not a guilt that is worth having.
There are many such guilts.
Listen, what if by accident you have hurt somebody?
You must feel sorry.
You must do what you can do to repair that.
All right, you crashed into somebody on the freeway.
Was it intentional?
No.
You should feel responsible if you were responsible, but not guilty.
I reserve guilt for deliberate infliction of pain where it was meant to be.
And the examples are the things that most of you won't qualify for.
Rape, murder, embezzlement.
And there, ladies and gentlemen, that's when you should not say, but as a common cliché today, guilt is always destructive.
You should never feel guilty.
That's not true.
It is one of the greatnesses of the human being that the human can feel guilt.
Animals can feel guilt.
Human beings can.
And they are worthy.
It is a sentiment worthy of feeling when appropriate.
When is it good?
It is good when, as I said, it was a deliberate infliction of an injury because then you were guilty.
When you're guilty, you should feel guilt.
Maybe that's the best way to put it.
When you're guilty of a wrong, you should feel guilty.
When you're not guilty of a wrong, you shouldn't feel guilty.
And certainly we shouldn't feel guilt, the guilt that used to be put on kids for masturbating, for example.
The infliction of hurt was on whom.
That, by the way, is a common problem in religion, where religion does have rules that do not have to do always with hurting another, but there are still rules anyway.
What do you do with those rules if you have an infraction?
It's a very difficult issue, but it's more worthy of a religious class.
And that is the line, by the way, where religion and psychoanalysis cross, and it's difficult for them to meet.
Because you go to a typical secular psychologist and say, what if a Jew says, you know, I was raised to keep kosher and I ate ham and I feel guilty.
Should he not feel guilty?
I have a friend who has a very interesting motto on this, who is an observant Jew.
His motto is, and I like it.
I like it very much.
He said, I only feel guilty when I violate the laws between man and man, but never when I violate the laws between man and God.
That's his, that is his, because in Judaism, that is a distinction that is drawn.
Every religion would have something analogous.
If a Catholic doesn't go to Mass every Sunday, for example, then is he violating what the church wants?
Yes.
Should he walk around feeling guilty?
That's another question.
Can you know you're wrong and not feel guilty?
I think so.
I think so.
It's a matter of training and it's a matter of honesty.
On the other hand, please understand, my friends, you don't want to obliterate guilt entirely.
The guilt, the human being incapable of feeling guilt is your Nazi, is your mass murderer.
Have you seen pictures of the Night Stalker?
He giggles when there are descriptions of gouging people's eyes out.
Should he not feel guilty?
I submit to you, if he felt guilty, he'd be more of a human.
He's a monster to us.
Why is he a monster to us?
Not just because of what he did, but the way he looks at it.
To be able to inflict such hurt on people and not feel guilty, we regard as sick.
Right?
Is the Night Stalker happy?
This leads to a question that in effect you raised.
Are there things in life more important than happiness?
It's a question you're going to have to grapple with, especially in the next term.
The irony of life is, the more you have that's more important than happiness in some ways, the more happy you'll be.
I won't.
You have to take next class.
But there are many ironies, many ironies with regard to happiness.
Why is guilt good in terms of happiness?
When it is appropriate guilt, I'll tell you why.
The person who can feel appropriate guilt, not gratuitous guilt, appropriate guilt, is saying the following.
I have such a high self-esteem that I am capable of knowing when I am guilty and feeling it.
That's when I believe it is at its healthiest.
I expect the following conduct from myself.
I violated it.
Let me give you an example of my dear Mormon friend who is quite not rich and was telling me a story just today.
He had bought a CD player for $89, a compact disc player.
He loves music, so it makes this more relevant.
And he could just about afford an $89 player, which as far as compact disc players go for music lovers is quite cheap.
As it happens in this big store that he got it from, they just gave him by accident a $460 CD player when he picked it up.
He told me what he went through as he picked it up.
Who would know?
Place is so big.
Nobody would get hurt.
What's the big deal?
And the joy he would have.
But classically, I mean, just exactly what Woody Allen's crimes and misdemeanors has.
Said, God has eyes.
I'm violating thou shalt not steal.
So he returned it.
He told me, by the way, that the people looked at him like the Messiah had returned to earth.
They were so startled that they were dribbling.
I mean, they were just staring at him.
And I believe that.
I mean, people are amazed if you return a dollar in extra change, $420 on a CD player that you crave, that's something.
Now, had he kept it, he would have felt guilty.
He also happens to be one of the happiest people that I know.
He is capable of feeling guilt.
He knows when to.
I think that is the way to learn it.
I remember in high school, I cheated my first year, and then I stopped.
I felt guilty.
But my self-esteem rose so much when I stopped that there was a very deep linkage I realized in my own life between being capable of feeling guilty and having high self-esteem.
And that the higher my self-esteem, and everybody believes that self-esteem and happiness are profoundly related.
So I would give you this equation, my friends.
The higher your self-esteem, the more capable you are of handling guilt.
And the higher your self-esteem, the happier you are.
So ironically, in that regard, guilt is related.
Otherwise, what do you do with that guilt?
Either you don't feel guilty, in which case your self-esteem can't be that high, you don't expect better than being a cheater of yourself.
I make the argument on these moral issues primarily on moral grounds, but I also do on self-esteem.
The moment you taste the feeling of not cheating, it is a feeling that you will never wish to lose by cheating.
And that comes also next, probably next term, on the whole question of are good people happier than bad people?
A very, very important question, needless to say.
Yes?
that because someone has a ability to do it they don't do something about it that doesn't mean it an example is in the location of five or six years the doctor felt guilty and did not have find self-esteem or did they do anything about it yeah but he felt guilty for a week That's the whole point.
No, the whole point of the film was that, hey, and I'm dancing at my daughter's wedding next week.
No, he didn't.
That was the point.
He was not racked by it at all.
That is exactly the Woody Allen point there.
Oh, sometimes, right.
But the whole thrust of it was, I'm getting along just fine.
Yeah.
What I didn't understand in that movie was the fact that in the end.
Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
They don't want to hear the end.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Well, I'm not giving it what we're doing with what I'm saying.
Don't worry.
Listen, folks, in all seriousness, the movie is not, you don't go to it for the plot.
It's not a detective story.
It's not a police detective thing.
There is no ending.
If I told you the ending, you'd enjoy the movie just as much.
You don't sit there wondering what's going to happen.
You sit there wondering what psychologically will happen and how you would react and so on.
But anyway, it's worth not talking about the movie now anyway because not everybody saw it.
So let me take that later.
Is that clear on guilt?
The difference between gratuitous and why it is worth having real guilt when it is deserved?
That distinction I'm drawing.
There is gratuitous guilt, but there is necessary guilt.
A human who can never feel guilty, I submit to you, has suppressed a serious part of him or herself.
It is not natural never to feel guilty.
There is something wrong.
You have suppressed something in your soul.
Yes.
Why is guilt so connected with being Jewish?
Are there any Catholics here?
Would you say it's connected with being Catholic?
What guilt?
Yeah.
No, it's not stereotyped as much as it is.
You feel it's more stereotyped.
Where's the other?
Yes?
Yes.
That's what I think.
Exactly.
Right.
You ask any group, any religious group like this, especially with European origins like the Jews from Eastern Europe.
I think that guilt is pretty endemic.
I think Catholics think they have it the worst.
Jews think they have it the worst.
There's no doubt Jews do have it the worst.
That's the difference.
No, you don't agree.
There's our Catholic disagreeing.
You're probably right.
You know that?
I think, you know why?
It's over different things.
That's what I think it is.
It's very much parental, I think, among Jews.
It's, you know, expecting things from the kids.
And there it's more, I think, theological.
Jews don't feel guilty for eating ham.
They feel guilty for not calling their mother.
It's different for not getting into Harvard, for not making a living in the three digits.
Everything's listen, but stereotypes have a lot of truth.
That's how they get to be stereotypes.
Yeah.
Can you tell where we see how person can rid themselves out of gratuitous guilt?
Oh, very good.
Right.
How do you rid yourself of gratuitous guilt?
Look, I want to tell you something, and I haven't mentioned it yet, but I endorse this strongly.
I believe that everyone in this room, everyone on earth, would be helped by psychotherapy or psychoanalysis.
I'm a very big believer in that.
I am one of the few who is as passionately endorsing of religion as I am of psychology.
It is unfortunate that they are regarded by most people as either or.
But I am convinced that a life, a non-reflective religious life, is barren.
And I believe that a non-religious reflective life is barren, okay?
Psychologically reflective.
I think that those it's the soul and the psyche, and they both need to be fed and be healthy and be developed.
So one way certainly would be there.
The other is to find out what are those areas and to have your brain say what I just said to you.
I didn't deliberately hurt anybody.
I am not guilty of anything, so why am I feeling guilty?
Okay?
Let me just take these two and move on.
Yeah.
Oh, there's a three.
That's it.
Yes.
How does one deal with guilt?
After the death of a loved one.
That is where someone who deals specifically with that subject would give you a better answer, I believe.
I know that there is so much about bereavement that psychologists have dealt with.
I can tell you only this.
The part I could better answer is how to deal with guilt before their death.
In effect, okay, I'll call on you in a moment.
I just want to say in this regard, it is one of the reasons I so frequently tell parents and children: reconcile while the parent is still alive.
Try to do it as best as possible.
Even if you have to bite your tongue, I learned this from, I must say to their credit, my parents.
My grandmother, may she rest in peace, was a very tough woman.
My paternal grandmother, a very tough woman.
I remember when I was about 12, she told me on the phone my mother was Hitler, which is not a positive term in Jewish life.
Basically, the only reason I could remember that she was Hitler is because she took away her son from her, I think.
You know, she was married to her son.
And that immediately was a major sin up there with genocide.
At any rate, she was a tough lady.
She also did many wonderful things.
I don't want to, God forbid, besmirch the name of my grandmother or of the dead woman.
But I want to illustrate a very important point that was very helpful to me as a child.
And this may be helpful to you in this regard.
My father would call his mother every day of the week on the telephone as an obedient, good son.
She drove him crazy on the phone.
He would put the phone down on the kitchen table.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
And every 90 seconds or so, he would walk back to it, go, Yeah, Mom.
I remember it so vividly.
And I was a very young child seeing this.
And he made the point both behaviorally and through teaching, through verbally, so clear to me.
Look, I owe it as a child, this honor to my mother to give her a call.
I don't, however, have to take all this grief.
So I make the call and don't take the grief.
In effect, that's what he was saying.
What he taught me in that was a very good lesson.
And I believe this very strongly in much of life.
Your heart doesn't have to be in everything.
Do the right thing behaviorally.
I'm a very big behaviorist.
You do the right thing.
Your heart's not in it.
Your heart's not in it.
I tell guys, what does it cost you to bring flowers home to your wife for no reason one Wednesday?
Your heart's not in it.
How do you know your heart won't be in it after you bring it and see her reaction?
What does this mean?
There's an idea here that has developed, I don't know what it's where.
If your heart's not in it, you don't do it.
It strikes me as garbage.
What is our heart in all the things we do?
If your heart isn't into work that day, do you sleep late?
Call your boss up.
I got a time.
Mr. Coe and I just have time.
My heart's not in Panama.
You see, you laugh.
In professional life, it's laughable.
Why in personal life is it not laughable?
You know, is it not laughable?
Ideally, your heart's in it, but not necessarily.
So I say, children, do the right thing by your parents so that when they do die, you will know, though, I didn't want to, I was a hero, I feel great, they thought I loved them, they thought I respected them, they did what I had to do, end of issue.
What are you going to wait for?
The great union of emotional bonding?
It won't take place on this earth.
It won't.
You know, parents are going to change.
Isn't that dishonest?
Is the question.
What is dishonest about?
Was my father dishonest calling his mother?
So tell me what's dishonest.
You do the right thing.
Not feel the right thing.
When you see, I'm so happy this has come out.
Guilt must be, oh, oh, to think that I would have missed this.
You know what the problem is?
Some of these areas are such not issues to me that I forget that they're issues to many people.
Guilt should be over actions, not feelings.
Write that down, please, please, please.
I realize now, speaking to you, how many people don't realize that guilt should be over behavior, not over feelings.
You don't love your mother, don't love your mother.
What the hell is there to feel guilty about?
Just act right That's very important That's very important If you act wrong, that's worthy of guilt.
But you can't feel wrong.
There's no such thing as feeling wrong.
None.
See, I'm so, in my own life, I don't know, like last night on my two nights ago on the radio show.
I went around the clergy.
I said, Father, you ever angry with God?
Never.
Pastor, you ever angry with God?
Never.
Rabbi, you ever angry with God?
Never.
Then I said, I'm always angry with God.
I said it on the air.
So long as it's not from God.
Yes, I'll get letters.
But you know what?
I know that I verbalize what so many people feel.
I try to do what God wants.
Behaviorally, I want to do what God wants.
Lead a good, righteous life, lead a religious life, etc., etc.
But yeah, I have some anger at God, not even over me.
I have been blessed.
I have anger at God over the misery that is in creation.
Children with cancer.
I mean, the whole thing, I don't have to tell you about it.
There's a lot of built-in suffering in this world that is not induced by people but was made into the system by God.
Okay, so what am I supposed to feel about that?
I love you for giving cancer to children.
What am I supposed to think?
Now, you can say you're supposed to love God despite that.
Okay, I haven't reached that level.
I do love God, and I'm angry at God.
Both.
I have mixed feelings.
To whom do we not have mixed feelings?
So, why shouldn't we have mixed feelings to God?
It makes sense.
If God is real in your life, you'd have mixed feelings.
Don't feel guilty over feelings to a child, to a spouse, to a sibling, to a parent.
Over actions only is it appropriate to feel guilty.
Otherwise, you will go crazy.
This, by the way, it's interesting to me.
This should not be, this is the one area, talk about Jewish-Christian differences.
This is the area where Jews should be strongest and where Christians usually have the biggest problem because Christianity is a religion of the heart.
Judaism is a religion of the law.
So, Judaism traditionally cultivates guilt over breaking the law, whereas Christianity did over feelings because the law is all in the heart.
Right?
In Matthew, in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying, A man who lusts after another woman, it's as if he's committed adultery with his heart.
Judaism has no such phrase.
The only way to commit adultery is with a different organ.
That is the Jewish view.
You've done it, you've done it.
That's wrong, real wrong.
But you've done it, not thought it, not felt it.
Now, listen, it's no mitzvah Judaism to walk around wanting to sleep with every woman around.
Not at all.
Obviously, Judaism wants to elevate the thought processes too.
But the guilt is very action-oriented.
So I'm telling you that it is over actions to feel guilty.
And that is why, if this can help you, my friends, you can keep your miserable feelings towards your parent and then act right.
That way, you have not been dishonest.
I'm not asking you to deny your feelings.
I'm asking you so that you don't have to ask this gentleman's question: what if the parent already died and I now feel guilty?
I want to avoid that in your life so you don't have that.
I want you to have them over to the house, even if sometimes you have to bite your lip.
They had to bite your lip in raising you.
We weren't always a pleasure to raise.
So now they're not always a pleasure to raise.
That's the way it goes in life.
And it's a fair, I think it's a fair analogy to use.
That's where guilt is appropriate.
Is this helping you?
I've got to know.
I need feedback.
Okay, good.
That's very important to me.
Actions, actions, actions.
How did I act today?
Yes.
Let me make it.
I said it at the outset.
I want to say it again.
There are without question exceptions to this rule.
Abusive parents.
You mentioned an alcoholic.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Yes.
But that is where every case needs to be measured on its own.
I can only ask, you know what you should do?
You should ask this man's question to yourself.
If that parent died tonight, could I know that I did what was possible within the parameters of that parent?
That's a fair question to ask yourself.
Okay?
Yeah, yeah, I don't mean you.
I don't mean you.
I'm sorry.
I believe that.
Mm-hmm.
Correct.
I have heard stories.
It is worth doing that.
However, it is worth talking to both an analyst or a psychotherapist and a rabbi or a priest or minister about whether or not you can do anything that would help you live after their death with no guilt.
I'm talking now on purely selfish grounds on your part, forgetting the commandment of honoring parents on purely selfish grounds.
Is there anything you can do now that you're not doing that you will then be able to say later, I did whatever I could do given this type of parent.
And if the honest answer is I could do nothing, they were that abusive, you deserve zero guilt in your life.
I do know this, however, for all the cases of abusive parents, I know too many of my peers who do nothing for their parents, who parents who are not particularly abusive, and all are slightly abusive.
The very role of parent is abusive.
It is, it was abusive.
You're a little helpless zilch in Superman and Superwoman's house.
Right?
So obviously you're going to be abused.
They tell you to go to sleep, you're being abused, right?
Who the hell are you?
I'm just a nothing, and you're telling me to go to bed.
And if they don't tell you to go to bed, you've been abused in another way.
They didn't serve as parents.
So that's why I have the motto.
Your kids are going to hate you anyway.
You might as well do the right thing.
That's my motto of parent-parental advice.
But I do believe that you have to do what you can do and that we have these obligations.
I mean, as I speak to you now, I think, you know, when was the last time I called my own parents?
And I saw, and I have a little guilt on it right this moment because I never let a week go and I let a week go.
And that's wrong.
And, you know, it's just something I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
I handle guilt.
But I'm not going to say to you, gee, it doesn't matter.
But it does matter.
That's all.
I think it does matter.
Yes.
I think a lot of guilt and a lot of problems come after parents have passed off when people realize that there are issues, that there are feelings that are still burning within them that they haven't opened up and haven't discussed with their parents, so that the parent can release their guilt and they can release their guilt and derive from the parent I'm sorry or whatever feelings were left unfinished.
I think that's what happens.
Those of you issues that especially on the occasions that a child and a parent can have such a dialogue, your point is well taken.
I don't know how frequent that is.
You know, it's so wrapped up as a complex.
Every single parent-child relationship is unique.
I can't, so it's hard to generalize beyond that.
I don't want to veer from the issue too far.
The issue was guilt.
The issue was guilt vis-a-vis parents, and especially vis-a-vis parents after they die.
I'm saying to you, as a general rule, the following: do what you can do, given the type of parent that it is.
That way you can say to yourself when they do die, and hopefully they die before you, because that's the way they want it also, that I did what I could do, and end of issue.
I did what I could do.
You don't have to change your feelings.
Listen, I really wonder, you know, a lot of this stuff with expressing emotion.
I think it's true, and I also wonder if you blew up at your parents over what you've been wanting to vent for the last 28, 38, 48, 58 years, would it help?
I don't know.
Yes, I think it would.
Okay, then in your case, you really got to do it.
Because emotions are always communicated.
Somehow they're communicating.
Right, but why?
It's subtlety.
You can't hide from sensitive people what you're really feeling.
Your father didn't hide from the rest of the family what he was feeling about his mother.
And his mother must have sensed it.
No.
No, I don't believe that.
First of all, I want to tell you, not only that, I am convinced that people have such excellent protective devices up that they protect themselves from the most obvious hurts, especially from children.
Are you kidding?
Oh, I think to the contrary.
People don't walk around with finely tuned sensors like that.
I don't think she had a clue that my father was going through hell on the telephone.
She knew only one thing.
Max, he calls me every day.
Vot a good son.
She told everybody she yelled his brains out, but to friends of his, say what a prince Max was for calling him.
I truly believe that she had no clue that he was going through hell.
She knew one thing he called.
That she's that what?
And the little thing is telling you about it.
Fine, maybe, yes, right.
Fine, and he knew that.
Parents like to hear from kids.
That's a general rule of life.
My grandmother was no exception.
Maybe she didn't like a Hitler call, but Hitler's husband she liked to hear from.
What can I tell you?
And by the way, her grandchildren, she knew very little English, but she would say, my na diamonds, my name.
That's my brother and me.
We were her diamonds and her millions.
And yet we knew what was going on.
Did she sit down and think with her, you know, what are my grandchildren really thinking about the interrelationship between me and my son?
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
Yeah.
You learned that as a child.
Well, now he was the minute that you thought those needed to have talked to me about no love.
No one in this room.
I mean, no one in the world to lose a parent.
Unfortunately, I did.
And I suffered health problems.
And there was no more losing son of the world.
But I still suffer guilt because things have happened in my life.
And so if we call that and say, you should do it while you were lost.
And I wanted my friends to stay away.
But I have that loss.
They don't know what that loss is.
Or that guilt.
Has anybody here lost a parent and does not feel any guilt towards them?
Well, they must have done something different.
I would love to hear what it was that they did.
I assume they would think they just acted normally and okay, and there was a decent relationship and they took care of them in some way.
No, the question may really be why you have that guilt.
I don't think the question is why don't they have their guilt?
I truly hope they live for 120 and healthy years.
But I won't feel guilty.
I mean, there are just things.
I mean, you know, well, I say, oh, God, that week in November 1989, when I went 10 days.
Anyway, I even have an answer for that.
Whenever my mother used to say, if you called more often, I'd faint.
I say, well, that's why I don't call more often.
So you see, even that was done respectfully.
No, no, this is really, this is an exact example of, truly, for an analyst.
I say it, and I'm totally pro-it.
I'm even thinking of going into the field partially.
I still believe in it.
Yeah.
non-matured skills.
It seems to me the opposite of happiness when that skill does not lead to action.
Because there's something that we've done something.
So we'll be there with the action that we've done.
Take care of that.
I don't hear that in the formulation.
That good guilt is the guilt that prompts you to do something productive.
I love it.
You know why it makes sense, though?
It's the natural follow-up of my statement that guilt should only be over actions.
The moment it's over a feeling, you're finished.
You can't repair your feeling.
You can repair an action.
You can become behaviorist.
Try to figure out actions, by the way.
Try and think it through.
What are actions that I could do for and/or with my parents that do not involve too much pain on my part?
Maybe a brief visit.
Maybe it is much better to, you know, with a lot of kids and parents, the first three hours are really nice.
Then it is a very swift descent into hell.
So what you have to try to do is have many three-hour visits.
That's what I mean.
Think you have to think it through like negotiations with the Soviets.
You've got to sit down in advance, think through what will produce, what actions will produce the best.
If for the last 20 times that you slept over there, you had a horrible time and it was a trauma, don't sleep over a 21st time.
And they'll tell you it'll hurt them.
Do you know what?
Parents are capable of recuperating.
That's something children have to learn.
Parents have to learn children are capable of recuperating, and children have to learn parents are capable of recuperating.
When I was with college kids, they would all die to move out to an apartment.
And everyone who didn't told me, if I do, my parents will die.
I told them that in seven years of running an institute with thousands of students, we have no record of a parent dying as a result of a kid moving out of the house.
Do you know what happens?
A week later, they come over to decorate.
Do you hear me?
I have never seen that fail.
They'll die.
You move out.
I'll die.
I'll never look at you, you're betraying me, et cetera, et cetera.
And then, what can I bring you?
Do you need new quilts?
So they recuperate.
Do what produces a positive thing.
You're going to only come to visit, and it's going to be very short.
They'll say, How can you only come for that time?
Of course, they'll say it.
It's a parental reaction that's Pavlovian.
Then you leave, but then you come back another time, and then it's fine.
Do what works.
That's the motto here.
Yes?
Listen, I can't, you know, I can give you a general answer, but understanding that, of course, it doesn't always apply.
It strikes me that you have to know the relationship you have.
I would have to know why a child would have such resentment over calling up a parent.
It strikes me as an action unworthy of feeling resentful over.
See, it's not like you, well, hold on, it's not like your father is moving in to your house and he has Alzheimer's.
That builds resentment.
It's absolutely inevitable.
Even when it's done by an utterly loving child, it's very hard to intrude.
No parent, no sober parent, and I mean that in all ways of sobriety, wants to inflict themselves on their children like that.
But I have to say to you, and I understand that, of course, there are going to be so many other issues.
If such a small act produces such resentment, then clearly you're not asking me about the small act.
The relationship is fraught with other angers.
And I can't answer that from such a remote distance from your situation.
I can only say in general that even if you don't want to call, it's worth calling for your sake as much as theirs.
And this all came about because this poor man asked a question which never got answered.
Because all I'm doing is trying to prevent that question from being answered so that you don't feel when they're dead, oh my god, I didn't do X, I didn't do Y, I did do Z, and so on.
That's all I'm trying to answer here.
But if that resentment is built in that way, tune out.
Distance yourself emotionally.
Talk about the weather.
Do you know how many parents and kids talk about football, talk about politics?
It's a way of not getting into that stuff.
Some people, it works.
I know someone who is dying to change her mother.
She's been dying to change her mother for 33 years.
And one day she will realize my mother will not change.
And what you do then is not wish she changed, you relate to the half-mother that you do have.
Life is filled with people who disappoint us.
This mother isn't the mother I wanted.
This father isn't the father I wanted.
Okay, now that you've established that, that's why I can only talk to your brains, and I'm such a believer in talking to your brains.
Now that I have established that mother will not be mommy that I really want, father will not be daddy that I really want, can I get anything out of them?
So that it won't be the most succulent fruit.
Is part of the fruit good?
Is it all rotten?
I suspect that very few of your parents are totally rotten as parents.
I add as parents.
Some people could be very nice people and rotten parents.
I appreciate that.
But that's what I would ask you to ask yourself.
Can you enjoy the good part of them?
Maybe they're only good under certain circumstances.
Maybe they're only good in their house.
So only visit their house.
Don't have them over.
Maybe they're only good outside of the house.
Maybe they're never good in your house or their house, but very good at a restaurant.
I'm certain, maybe no, listen to another one.
Maybe they're only good when there are other relatives around.
Maybe only on the telephone.
Maybe you have to leave the city.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
Figure out what works.
Be practical.
But confront and confront and confront and confront what is it going to get you?
Aggravation, exactly.
Exactly.
It's one man's view.
And I can't go further except to tell you it's worked.
But it would be betraying me, my parents, to relate further.
I can tell you that in the intimate people I've lived with and known, it has worked, wherein they have figured out ways in which to do it.
And sometimes you must set boundaries.
That's important.
Not confrontation, boundary setting.
You're going to visit.
Please, I've got to tell you, beyond five days, we can't take it.
You may say beyond six hours.
Okay, but figure out what's takable.
Okay?
That's what I mean.
And then it'll work.
They'll complain no matter what.
Most parents want you all the time, they think.
That's the joke.
They think they do.
So no matter what limit you set, they will be unhappy.
Why didn't you visit for more?
Why didn't you call more often?
Why didn't you stay longer?
Why didn't you send more baby pictures?
You only sent three, but you sent the other grandmother four.
How do you know it sent four?
She told me.
Why'd she tell you?
To show how much closer she is with you.
Don't you understand?
So what you do is you have it developed at a place that leaves you two photos on every one.
You immediately ship both to both sides of the family.
I mean, the head has to be used.
And then that's the end.
You in your mindset, end of issue.
They can rant, they could rape, they can complain.
Some parents like to complain.
Do you understand?
Most people think most people, it's sad, but most people think, if not most people, half the world are jerks.
Right?
Do you understand something?
All those jerks are parents.
Did you ever think of that?
The average guy you think is a jerk on the freeway, look at the way he's got a kid.
You have to remember that.
You can't fire your parents, though you'd like to.
You can fire them emotionally.
I believe whoever said the divorce from the father.
That's correct.
You can fire them emotionally, even though they still linger.
I mean, it never ends.
But you can be behavioral and move on.
That is why, by the way, and this will come up later, I place so much emphasis on the marital relationship.
That is a very important relationship wherein, and that's why I have changed in my life on my views on this, not coincidentally, partially, because I went through it on divorce.
You can't do anything about parents.
You have to work with what you have.
But at a given point in a marriage, one doesn't deserve to come home to unhappiness every day, every day till you die.
It is wrong to have marriage as a life imprisonment.
Wrong.
It is just wrong.
People, both parties deserve better than that.
So there, that is a relationship that is worth cultivating.
That is something of much greater significance.
And that is why it is so important not to try not to let in-laws hurt a relationship.
It's very important that it be clear who comes first.
Oh, do I have an answer to that?
Oh, oh, But it's not for this, for the next time.
I went through that with great, great severity.
Nobody was more traditional in his views than the person talking to you.
No one.
There isn't an East European grandmother who had more traditional views of what will happen to the kids if there's a divorce than I did.
And it was wrong.
I will tell you one story.
When I got divorced, I got my divorce.
I had a religious marriage, not a religious divorce.
I'm a religious man.
I went to the head of the Orthodox Bet Dint.
That's Hebrew for court, rabbinic court in Southern California.
A man who is your classic East European Orthodox bearded elderly rabbi.
Utterly traditional, utterly religious, utterly halakhic, which means observant.
I come in to get the papers.
Not exactly the happiest day of my life, even if you know it's the right thing.
It's a trauma.
Divorce is a trauma, period, end of issue.
One of my friends called it a Holocaust, and he didn't even have a child.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
The only thing worse is a bad marriage.
And the rabbi and I started talking.
It was one of those moments where I couldn't believe it, but I walk in and he goes, oh, Dennis Prager, I listen to your show all the time.
The last thing I was on bye-bye.
And the last thing I ever thought, I ever thought the guy didn't even own a radio.
I mean, he looked so traditional.
So we start talking.
And I said to him, just to make conversation and thinking, sometimes I make conversation with people saying something I know they'll agree with.
You know what I mean?
I'm sure you all do it, you know, just to get them to talk and not thinking, you know, I didn't want to.
Last thing I wanted to do was raise some difficult issues.
So I said to him, you know, God, it must be somewhat difficult for you here in Southern California in the late 20th century with all the divorce going on.
Absolutely certain he would say, yeah, it's tough.
Too many divorces.
This is what he said.
As it happens, not at all.
In the old country, there were so many miserable marriages that I saw that would never get a divorce.
It was a tragedy.
I couldn't believe it.
Coming out of this bearded mouth, I wanted to hug the man.
It was almost as if I didn't believe what I had just heard.
He said he saw so much pain and misery because in the old country, it was the old value.
You don't get divorced.
Judaism always allowed for it, but what religion allows and what the people do are not always the same thing.
And he was right.
And he was right.
And as regards kids and that, we'll talk in the next term because it's a very, very important issue.
My God, from a subject I thought I had covered to the entire session with you.
It is very worthwhile.
Very worthwhile.
There are still a few more minutes, so I won't get into the next subject now.
Anyone want to raise any issues?
Yeah.
One thing I want to say on another way I think of describing what we're talking about between the two of us is not the true of the guilt is I think necessary guilt is about the violation of your own value.
I think that unnecessary guilt, maybe what perhaps other people are talking about the whole month, have to do with their feelings that they violated, they didn't live on somebody else's value system and the guilt that they carry knowing that that person is disappointed or angry with someone.
I think people confuse those.
It's a very good definition.
Does it work with you?
Yeah, it sounds like it has.
How many of you find guilt to be a burden in your life?
I am curious.
Well, it's a very substantial number.
And how many of you was it vis-a-vis your parents?
For how many of you is the guilt that you just noted vis-a-vis your parents?
Raise your hand high if you would, if you're prepared.
Just by a show of hands, how many of you is it vis-a-vis a non-parent?
Is there any guilt on earth outside of parent-children?
It's so interesting.
Isn't that interesting?
Right, murder, hullabai.
I wish people were felt guilty.
Is that so interesting?
He said, murder.
Oh, he'd have to repeat it.
It was too eloquent, actually.
It was his own theory on the difference between gratuity.
You want to repeat it once I'm a pillow?
Go ahead, stand up.
No, I'm just saying that you're not speaking to you.
I was saying that the necessary guilt, in my opinion, is the guilt that comes from having violated your own values.
What people often describe as feeling guilty is the feeling that they upset someone else's value system and they're concerned about that person being angry with them.
Oh, incidentally, talking about the relationship between guilt and anger, inducing guilt.
Oh, this is another one.
Oh, God.
Inducing guilt is a sure, fire way to get someone angry at you.
You are so right in making that point.
And a friend of mine had the following circumstance.
He was writing a play with this friend of his, and he got angry.
The friend got angry with my friend.
And he made my friend feel guilty.
One of the friends, one of them made the other feel guilty.
It's stupid who's like, it matters to you.
One of them made the other feel guilty over something.
And that one finally, after repenting enough, said he's sorry, sorry, he said, listen, if you keep making me feel guilty, it's just going to make me angry at you.
And he just had to say it, and it snapped everything.
It was very helpful because that is true.
And what you're really feeling towards that parent or kid, the more you feel guilt, there's more anger.
And especially towards a kid, do you realize what you're doing now?
You're ending up feeling guilty about your kid, but the more you feel guilty, the angrier you are at them.
And what parent is not going to feel guilty about being angry at a kid?
So it's a horribly vicious cycle.
And, you know, these are things, that is why it is a very helpful thing to talk to professional people about it.
It is also very helpful.
I'm telling you, as a child, and you're all children, but we forget sometimes when we get older, if you could say you're sorry to your child, that is a very, a child would love to hear that.
For whatever it is, before a young kipper, it is a Jewish tradition to ask the people you know to follow.
Please forgive me for anything that I did to hurt you this year, intentionally or unintentionally.
And believe me, in most parents' lives, there are unintentional hurts to children.
They are.
Most people aren't made to be parents.
It's hard.
You know, it's interesting to be very, I hope it isn't to violate any familial rules, but I'll try and see.
I learned a very interesting thing.
Joseph Talushkin and I, my co-author, and I came to a very interesting conclusion when we were the Brandeis Bardeen Institute.
I was director, he was educational director.
We got very friendly, as some of you know, with literally thousands of couples.
And I was there as director for seven years.
We were both single, so there was no vested interest in any of our observations.
And I couldn't believe he once pointed out to me, he said, do you notice who seemed to be the happiest couples?
We talked to people in their 50s, 60s, not 20s.
The ones who have no children.
I will never forget when he, and any of you who know him, know he's a very traditional guy, when he made that observation.
That was, I ought to write one chapter, Old World Myths That Have Been Blown Up in My Life, and I Wish It'd Been Blown Up Earlier.
Divorce, kids are the source of happiness, mothers are dying to be, women are dying to be mothers.
All these things, they're just not real.
They're not real.
The real was much better.
Kids are not conducive to a great marriage.
They are more of an obstacle to a great marriage than a source of it.
I was raised totally differently in the old world values of, oh, kids bring couples together.
They both have something to share.
Bologna.
Bologna.
There is nothing like a kid to neutralize the passions that made him.
I wonder if there is any couple in the world that has had the intimacy post-child that they had pre-child.
I don't know.
And if they do, it's either because they're deaf, an extremely valuable thing to have as a parent, or have four round-the-clock mates, or have worked very, very, very hard at it.
But it still remains an obstacle.
Or the kids moved out, that's right, and they rediscover that person they married 20 years earlier.
That's right.
Absolutely.
I still am totally pro-I-I am.
With great strength of conviction, but not for the romantic reasons that I was raised to believe about children.
And the joke is, I was raised to believe that in a world where my own mother preferred not to have them.
That's the joke.
So that even that truth was being hidden from me.
So it's a very interesting world.
Okay, thanks very much.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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