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Nov. 18, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:03:57
Timeless Wisdom - The Problem of Happiness - Part 8
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
Particularly common in America today.
I don't know if it was common in the past.
And I don't know if it's common outside of America, but I know that it is common in the United States today.
And I also believe strongly that some of you, perhaps not at all, a majority, and hopefully few, but I have no doubt that some of you, these will be very, very helpful words and perhaps even painful.
And this obstacle to happiness is to see oneself as a victim.
It is extremely tempting if you are not happy to say the following, I am unhappy because of somebody else or because of something else.
And therefore, remember, the moment you do that, and in effect, by the way, this almost summarizes part one of this whole course.
The moment you do that, you are a victim.
And there is somebody to blame.
My parents, my teachers, my spouse, my kids, my society, Reagan, whatever it might be, those are the reasons.
Every decade has a Republican president to blame for its unhappiness.
Two decades ago was Nixon, was the cause of all ills.
Now it's Reagan.
At least, you know, that's probably why Republicans are elected.
Otherwise, there would be no one for these people to blame for their unhappiness, and it would be very sad.
Or they would elect an unhappy president, which is what happened in the one Democrat who got in.
The point is, there is a very deep temptation to blame others.
Now, I have two things that must be stressed immediately.
I live in the real world.
Therefore, I do not deny that there are indeed victims, real live victims of atrocious things that cause unhappiness.
If you were abused as a child, you are a legitimate victim.
If you were raped, you were victimized.
Real, true victimization.
Most people are not abused as children, and being yelled at by your mother every day does not constitute abuse.
And most are not raped.
Moreover, most people are hurt unjustly in some way in life.
Every one of you, every one of you, including me, we can all create a curriculum beta to prove what victims we are.
There is not a person in this room who could not make an excellent case for having been a victim.
That doesn't mean, therefore, that we are all equally non-victims.
As I said, I know there really are some victims.
And there is a tendency in this society, as I just pointed out in my Judaism class, there is a tendency, not just in this society, this is human, to go to extremes.
On the one hand, there is the everyone is a victim syndrome except white males.
They can never be victims for some reason.
Excuse me, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males.
White Jewish males sometimes can qualify.
So there is on the one hand the tendency to see everybody as victims.
On the other hand, there is a tendency to see no one as victims.
I want to get rid of the second part first because it's less germane to our subject.
There is a body of thought that I hear on the radio.
Those of you who've heard me on the radio know it is very hard to get me to lose my cool.
It takes a great effort, and not through the usual.
A Nazi can come on, somebody can come on and attack my mother.
There are very few things that will really do it.
One of them is if someone says that whatever happens to people, they have brought it upon themselves.
That drives me up the wall.
You're hit by a drunk driver, somehow or other, you brought it upon yourself.
That tendency to say no one is a victim is as dangerous and stupid as the tendency towards everybody's a victim.
They both emanate from the same thing, a desire to deal with unhappiness.
See, on the one hand, the people who say everybody is, no one is a victim, what they're trying to do is this.
It's really a defense.
It's not being able to face the reality that an undeserving person could get cancer, that an undeserving person can be hit by a drunk driver.
It is just something that a person does not want to face.
Right?
It's very depressing to know that any one of you nice people tonight can be mugged and slashed by a slasher, that the victims of the Night Stalker did nothing whatsoever, nothing, to deserve to have what was done to them done to them by the Night Stalker.
It's a painful thing for people to realize.
But it is true, you can truly be a victim.
But because we have called so many undeserving people victims, ironically in this society, the group that we least call victims are the truest victims.
The least sympathy seems to go to those who really are victims, victims of terrible diseases and victims of crime.
The other extreme, however, is the one that we have to deal with in our class, and that is the tendency to see oneself as a perpetual victim.
Woe unto you if you marry such a person.
It is one of the hotter spots in Dante's inferno.
You're stuck with someone who always sees him or herself as a victim.
It can drive sane people mad in record time to be with such people.
No matter what happens, they have been victimized.
And unfortunately, our society is helping this a great deal, in particular with any group that qualifies, and it's an odd thing how you qualify for it, in minority status.
Blacks and women, in particular, are told constantly, see yourselves as victims.
Let me give you the women first.
Herwin Helper in writing in the Los Angeles Times about two years ago, compiled a list of books, which I'll read to you in a moment.
And he wrote, I liked it: there is a tidal wave of books that, taken together, create an atmosphere in which it becomes generally accepted that everything would be fine in relationships if it weren't for those screwed-up men.
In these books, men, immature, impossible, and self-centered, are the villains.
So that he compiled a list, and these were just a few of them: smart women, foolish choices, men who hate women and the women who love them, women who love too much, the Peter Pan syndrome, and so on and so forth.
Incidentally, I have scoured bookstores to find a single book with the man as a victim.
Does not exist.
There is no smart men, foolish choices.
There is no women who hate men and the men who love them.
There is no men who love too much or the Tinkerbell syndrome.
There is none.
Now, my friends, with all respect, I think that every one of us can admit that there have been at least 25 men who have been legitimately hurt by women in America.
Is that a fair statement?
I think I don't want to overstate the case here.
You know, out of 250 million people, 125 million of whom are male, 25 at least qualify as having been legitimately hurt romantically by women.
But there are no such books because it doesn't sell.
Women and blacks are told you're victims.
And the horrible thing about it is you can never get out of that.
It is a recipe for you to see yourself as a victim and therefore unhappy.
You can't be happy in a victim.
It's not possible.
Oh, do I love being hurt?
I love being a victim.
I want to be victimized again.
Now, by the way, I'll bet you under psychoanalysis, there probably is an urge on some people's parts to see themselves as victims.
So that, frankly, you know, subconsciously, it probably is there.
But consciously, at any rate, I don't think it is.
But whether it is subconscious or conscious, you can't be happy and walk around thinking of yourself as a victim.
They cannot go in tandem.
It is not possible.
So even if you are a victim, it is worth recognizing.
Look, I was hit by a drunk driver, and I truly am a victim.
But you still have to move on.
Even if you're a real victim, you have to move on.
But what if you are not a real victim, or at least no more so than anyone else here, and everybody is a victim of something or someone?
Who hasn't been hurt by a loved one, in a relationship, in a marriage, by a parent, by a child, by a friend, by a boss?
Who has not?
You cannot live and not be hurt.
And wherein truly you are a victim.
Of course it's true.
But who wants to walk around life thinking that way?
Well, apparently a lot of people do.
But whether or not it helps, what it doesn't help is happiness.
It is a clear recipe for misery to think of yourself as a victim.
I can't tell you that often enough.
Quite aside from all other things, it is just a recipe for misery.
There are, incidentally, reasons for this, why this victimization thing has happened.
And I will just briefly allude to a few of them.
One, the contributors have been, ironically, macro, not micro.
For example, Marxism and those who have subscribed to many of its socioeconomic theories, even if they're not Marxists, do believe that mass numbers of people are victims of socioeconomic forces.
Where do you think you get that term from?
People are victims.
And by the way, therefore, what you get is, and it's a very interesting process, whenever I say such a thing on the radio, a caller will call in immediately and say to me, ah, you're blaming the victims.
You see, Prager, you're talking about the poor who really are victims of socioeconomic forces, and you blame the poor.
Because after all, you have a choice according to this thinking.
Either the poor are poor because of socioeconomic forces, in which case they're victims, or they did it to themselves, in which case you're just blaming the victim and you're vile.
Now, it's such a simplification, a terrible simplistic view of life.
There are many reasons why people are poor.
But as one thinker put it, the question is not why are there poor.
The question is why are there any rich?
Poverty is the human condition.
Poverty is the norm.
You don't learn much by asking why are there poor people in America.
You learn much more by asking, how did hundreds of millions of previously poor people get wealthy, get to be middle class?
That's more instructive.
Rather than saying, hey, see, every poor person in this country is clearly a victim of some force.
Sometimes poor people are victims.
Sometimes poor people are poor because they're lazy as hell and have lousy values.
Sometimes poor people are not poor because they're lazy or because society has trampled on them.
They have been born into a family.
What about a Mexican who comes here and is poor?
He's working to get wealthier.
And those who see themselves as victims are hardly likely to ever climb the social ladder.
Most of you are Jewish and your ancestors who came here, parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, most likely were very poor.
Very poor.
They did not see themselves as victims.
They saw themselves as so lucky to come to the golden Medina, as they called it in Yiddish, the golden country, where they were actually free from being raped in pogroms and free to actually make a decent living, and decent was namely giving your kids meals.
I submit to you that attitude is as important as socioeconomic forces, especially in a free society.
I'm not blaming the victim, but I don't believe there is a victim in most instances in this country.
If you're a member of the lowest caste in India, yes, you're a victim of a caste system because they won't let you out of it.
But that is not true in the United States of America for most people.
For some it is.
But our statement to women and blacks, you're all victims, only hurts those two groups terribly, individually and as a group.
One of the things has been socioeconomic forces.
Another has been the burgeoning psychological orientation of our society.
You are what you are because of psychological things that have hurt you, most particularly, obviously, your parents' errors.
And so we are far more aware of that.
You know, why do I act like I do?
It's because I'm doing what my mother did to me.
And we answer these things, which previous ages never did.
So the tendency to see oneself as a victim is very deep, socioeconomically and psychologically.
The trouble is, every day you do is a day further from happiness.
I cannot emphasize this too much, and I told you how strongly I believe that there really are real victims in life.
So what are you supposed to do?
Well, first of all, you have to understand that everybody legitimately can see himself as a victim.
And secondly, you have to just bang your head against the wall and say, I will never call myself a victim again.
Because if I do, if I walk around with a sign I am a victim, then I will interpret all things that happen that way that way.
And it becomes a vicious cycle.
Because what the victim starts to think about is that everything that is done to him or her is in fact done to victimize him.
Whereas the one who never walks around thinking that he or she's a victim, even when you become a victim, you don't see yourself as a victim.
That is why I began this course by saying that this is appealing to your brain.
Any of you who see yourself as victims, you are doing yourself a terrible disservice.
And the irony of irony in life is that, again, it's part of cycles.
There are good cycles and vicious cycles.
If you see yourself as a victim, who's going to want to relate to you?
Then you'll really become a victim.
You'll become a victim of believing you're a victim.
What will happen is, who wants to be with you?
Do you want to be with someone?
Ask always yourself that.
Do you want to be with somebody who walks around thinking he or she's a victim?
Of course not.
So why would anybody want to walk around with you?
It's so important to always reverse roles, always.
Painful, but important.
That's why I reverse the titles of those books, and you started to laugh.
Reverse this thing.
Would I want to be with such a person?
I remember when I used to teach in another context, when I used to teach college students at the Brandeis Party and Institute, the last week I would talk about these subjects and about dating.
They were all college and graduate students and they were all single.
So I would ask them, how many of you think that a lot of the people you go out on dates are boring?
And everybody raised their hand.
Then I said, How many of you think you're boring?
Nobody raises hand.
So you figure either there was no boring people ever came to that institute, but of course you realize what the point is.
We don't perceive ourselves as the way we are.
Oh, that was a boring date.
Me, oh, are you kidding?
I'm Albert Schweitzer.
So that's what I suggest be done on the victim issue.
It's a very, very bad thing.
Next, this will help you.
Some of these have helped me more than others, by the way.
The victim, just like the guilt thing, are two things that I had to learn from others.
Because thank God those are not two obstacles to my own happiness.
But here's one that has helped me immensely and will help many of you, I think.
Never identify tension with unhappiness.
This is a new one for you.
I suspect most of you have never thought this one through.
Most people think that happiness is an absence of tension.
And that having tensions shows that you are unhappy.
In fact, they're almost interchangeable terms.
You feel tense, or better, feeling tense is not the same as having tensions.
But if you have tensions in your life, you may very well equate them with being unhappy.
Ladies and gentlemen, please feel free to put this in neon lights.
Only animals can live tension-free lives.
The more human you are, the more deep you wish to be, the more you wish to grow, the more tensions you will have in your life.
The attempt to escape tensions is non-human, it's literally subhuman.
It took me a very long time to realize this.
I love being relaxed.
But I came to realize that the more I wanted to do in life, the more I, in the truest sense, wanted to do good with my life, the more tensions I was inviting.
And it holds true for anything.
I'm going to give you a series of examples of tensions that are inevitable, and that you have to realize that.
And once you do, it's going to be helpful.
For example, there are marital tensions.
The moment you realize that tension is part of being married, that there will actually be moments when there is no tension, instead of looking the other way around, how can we have no tension?
Rather, understand tension is the norm.
Now, obviously, everything has levels, and you have to ask from whence emanates tension.
But the very fact that it is male-female is going to have tension.
In fact, male-female without tension may not be good.
You don't want to just be soft pillows who fluff on each other with no tension.
In fact, one of the appealing things of the first date with someone you've liked is that there was tension, sexual tension, chemical tension, personality tension.
You weren't sitting there absolutely relaxed.
You liked that tension.
It's what being alive is about.
You want to preserve some of that tension, in fact, in your marriage.
You don't want to be cow and bull sharing a bed.
Actually, cow and bull sharing a bed would have plenty of tension.
Two cows might be better.
to the bulls.
Tension is part of being married.
Gratuitous tension, we don't need.
Right?
I mean, where just one is causing it for reasons that are unnecessary and just could be dealt with and removed.
But when you remove gratuitous tension, there will still be real tension.
How could there not be?
One of you will have to be 100% a yes man or woman for there being no tension.
Yes, darling.
Certainly, darling.
I agree, darling.
I want to do that, darling.
If you wish that, darling, I wish it too, darling.
And that works for a good two weeks, at which point, one of you goes crazy.
But there's no tension.
Somebody is yesing the way through the marriage.
But you don't want that.
I mean, you know, we all fantasize we want it.
Of course, you know, if only she would do that.
You know, I'm so terrible.
I'm terrific, right?
And that's what we all feel.
But the truth of the matter is, most of us would not want that in a spouse.
Incidentally, that was the old way of thinking.
I'm not belittling it.
Where it works, fine.
I don't tell people how to be married.
It's not my business.
And they probably had fairly tension-free lives in the traditional world where the woman knew her place, or at least we so imagine.
I mean, you know, like, I don't know anybody who lived like that, but we read about it.
You know, we all have this image of the old country where she was going, yes, darling, yes, darling.
I mean, it's basically nonsense.
But there are traditional societies where the woman walks, paces behind the man, and defers to him constantly and serves him constantly and so on.
It's not so terrible, not so terrible.
But it doesn't work anymore in America today, and that's the way it is, friends.
However, some of you could move to Saudi Arabia and try and resurrect it.
However, for those of you not living in Saudi Arabia, it is not likely.
Now, that does not mean, therefore, that it's a mitzvah to always argue.
That is the other extreme, and here we go back to our extremist things, where, you know, he could say it's raining out, and she says, you always say it's raining.
It's drizzling.
That is the other extreme where you invent tension.
If there's no tension, I don't feel well.
That's the other extreme.
And it is, again, the human tendency is to love extremes.
Natural tension from two live, developed human beings is what I'm talking about.
Marriage is filled with it.
It's just going to be there.
Then, just when you are beginning to work out the gratuitous tensions, you have a child.
And then the other tensions seem like nothing compared to the new tensions that this kakamani creature just brought into the house, which you had thinking you would reduce the other tensions.
The single stupidest thought a couple can ever have in their entire marriage.
Hey, we're having problems.
Let's have a child.
There is no thought in the whole world as dumb as that thought.
Nothing comes close.
But it is a common thing for people to do.
Figure will focus on this other creature so that, and as we all know, children enhance the love life, for example, of a couple.
As I've often said, that which creates a child is then killed by the child.
There ain't no prophylactic like a child.
That is part of life.
Children, then there is tension with children.
If you have no tension with a child, then the child has in no way created its own individuality.
Tension doesn't mean I hate you, I will throw things at you and hope you die.
Tension is tension.
There is a tension.
I have to assert myself.
You have to assert yourself.
Then it is good.
And if the tension is worked out hopefully, you go forward and things are better.
So there's tension in marriage, there's tension with children.
What am I saying?
I have to review each time.
My point in all this is to tell you: if you equate tension with unhappiness, you're finished.
What happens is, some people do believe that, so they opt for a life without tension.
Therefore, some people opt not to get married.
Then you do not have marital tension.
There's no question about that.
And you don't have tension with children.
No question about that.
That is why you have to know in life, and this is part of my argument on tensions, you must always be aware of prices paid.
There is a price paid to being married.
There is a price paid to having children.
It will help you to remember that you have willfully paid that price.
You have an alternative, not to get married, not to have children, or, for that matter, leaving your spouse and children.
There are alternatives.
However, none of them is tension-free.
Part of the reason most people get married is because of the tension of being alone.
Don't forget that.
There is one.
By and large, whatever you opt for has tension.
There's gratuitous, just as there's gratuitous pain, and there is gratuitous guilt.
But there is.
And when you know that, it's calming to know it is part of life.
There are going to be tensions, a lot of tensions.
Within these categories, there is the tension of always weighing the options.
Married versus single, children versus no children, career versus family.
It's a common tension for many women today.
It is a tension.
And it's not necessarily soluble.
Not all tensions are soluble.
In fact, most of the built-in tensions of life are not soluble.
I told you about the tension of insatiability.
His in the variety arena, hers in the intimacy arena, they are not fully soluble.
That's all.
And you know what?
It is peace-inducing to know that chasing a solution to all my tensions is itself pointless and fruitless.
That already relaxes you.
To know that tension is part of life.
That's it.
It is a very big help.
I know in my own life to be personal.
All of this is help.
To recognize this.
Don't have an image of a time in your life without tension.
It's a cause of anxiety and a cause of unhappiness.
Oh, if only my wife were like this, there would be no tension.
If only my husband were like this, there would be no tension.
If only my children did this, there would be no tension.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't mean people can't get better and removes, again, gratuitous tensions.
I am not a fatalist.
Well, this is the way it is.
Let's not try to improve it.
But just know that, as well as the tensions with your own self and your own nature.
To give one more example of something that I already spoke about, there's a tension between fun and happiness.
Happiness will probably not come.
If you opt for happiness, then you're going to have to give up some fun.
Life is a constant trade-off.
That is another way I'm putting this term of tension.
And you know that.
If you want X, you've got to give up a little Y. That's the way it works.
In religion, it became the clearest to me, and that is really what started me on understanding the value and inevitability of tension.
I have permanent religious tension.
And for years, I wanted to get rid of it like a cold.
And then I realized, in order for me, this individual, to get rid of all religious tension, I will either have to drop my faculty of reason or drop my faith.
But the moment I insist on having both a commitment to my faith and my reason, I will have permanent tension.
And it is true.
And now I am relaxed over tension.
And incidentally, within Judaism, it makes particular sense because the word for Jew, which is Israel in the Bible, means fight with God.
Most Jews don't know that, let alone non-Jews, but that's what the word means.
Well, anybody who's a member of the struggle with God people is going to be filled with tension.
If the name of your religion is struggle with God, there's tension.
But you know what, my friends?
Spare me from those who have avoided all tension.
They have become fanatics.
In Judaism, Christianity, Islam, in secularism, these are the people who never doubt themselves.
I believe in Marxism.
I believe in Judaism.
I believe in Christianity.
I have all truth.
There is no other truth.
There is nothing else to challenge me.
Science is irrelevant, end of issue.
Do not bother me.
I have a monopoly on truth.
That's comforting, but you pay a price.
You cease to be human.
You cease to be open to influences.
You cease to be open to people who don't share your true belief.
That's what the true believer is.
Why do people like to be fanatics?
Because they don't want the trouble of tension.
The non-fanatic has tension.
If you're absolutely certain about liberalism or conservatism, you have no tension.
If you're a Democrat and you're embarrassed by your party, you're a Republican, you're embarrassed by your party, you've got troubles.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg has a great phrase in this regard regarding Jews.
I've often heard him say to Jewish audiences, I don't care what denomination you're a part of, as long as you're ashamed of it.
I think it's a great line.
That's exactly the point.
So long as you have tension with what it is, a healthy tension, and you haven't become a true believer or a fanatic, you're still human.
God bless you.
It's those who have deposited all their questioning and all their tensions aside who become boring.
That's truly the definition of a boring person.
Someone with no tensions.
Right?
Isn't that a good way of defining the boring person?
There's no struggle going on inside that person.
Whether it's religious or secular or conservative or liberal, irrelevant.
I sit in front of my TV set.
I watch ball game after ball game after ball game.
What's my tension?
Over whole win.
You want to grow, there's tension.
Growth is tense.
It is.
There is no way to grow painlessly without tension.
Therefore, I end this part by telling you, make peace with it.
And then, believe it or not, ironically, you can then say, I am very relaxed over being tense.
As odd as it sounds.
Doesn't mean gratuitous tension.
That's not good.
Your spouse walks in the room and you get nervous.
That's not a good sign.
Okay?
Okay.
Finally, this should leave us room for questions.
Every single obstacle that I have mentioned in this entire course has been a battle with yourself.
Every single one.
They have been obstacles within us.
From genes to human nature to guilt, to believing fun is happiness to equating it with success to what we just discussed today, of equating tension with unhappiness or identifying yourself as a victim.
But ladies and gentlemen, it would be embarrassing for me to give a course on happiness, to talk about happiness, and not to admit that there are outside factors that really can impinge on one's happiness.
It is not entirely within us.
The only thing that is within us, and please remember this, is how we respond.
I learned that from Viktor Frankl in his book, Faith After the Holocaust.
The Nazis took away everything from us except one thing, how we would respond.
That can't be removed.
I mean, I guess it could be removed under torture.
I mean, there is a point even where that can be removed incidentally.
Nazi told a Jewish woman to choose which one of her children will be killed or both will be murdered.
You can't say that they didn't take away even that from her.
But by and large, even those knowing they are going to their death, you have one choice.
How do you respond to it?
There's not much of a leeway, but there is some.
None of you, however, is in Auschwitz.
So for your obstacles, your hardships, I should say, in life, it is fair to say that even when all else is removed, that isn't.
How will you respond?
You lost a loved one, then it is truly a source of sadness.
It is a tragedy, especially if the young one is a spouse, if it's a young one, I should say, and especially if it's a spouse at any age, a child at any age, a parent.
Not at any age, it's not a tragedy.
It's always sad.
It's different from tragedy.
It is a tragedy if you're young and you lose a parent.
I never realized that, ironically, how much that is until I became a parent.
Then I think of my child, and then you really realize what a devastating blow it could be.
But you still have a choice.
Not at eight, obviously, but as an adult, how do you react?
Now, of course, we are sophisticated enough to know that that is somewhat circumscribed.
I could see a Freudian psychoanalyst come in here and say, with all respect, Mr. Frager, how we react to such things is really not in our hands.
It is psychologically predetermined.
I don't accept that, even though, as you heard, an eloquent testimony on behalf of analysis, I do not believe that.
Otherwise, we are truly Skinnerian, named after Harvard's B.F. Skinner, who in the final analysis sees us as really just sophisticated robots responding to psychological stimuli.
Nevertheless, all that being said, the final thing that I will cover in part one of this course: the obstacle to happiness that is not in us is life is hard.
And it is.
And for some, it's harder than for others.
And that is not deniable.
And if you're abused as a child, which I already referred to in the victimization obstacle, it's hard.
And I can't just say, listen, you've got to feel good and rise above it.
If you're happy and clap your hands.
No, that doesn't always work.
I am aware of that.
There is some real ongoing tragedy.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what I want to say to those things.
And next term, I will have much more to say on responding to all of these things.
But on this particular problem of life's hardship, I want to ask you a question.
Compared to whom, or compared to what, is your life hard?
Is it harder than most?
If it isn't, then why are you so unhappy?
Maybe then, in fact, you really do have to look inside for the reasons for your unhappiness.
I don't think there's a person in this room, I take that back.
Maybe there are five people in this room who could not compose an honest autobiographical sketch that would make you worthy of being cried for.
I mean it.
I mean that utterly sincerely.
Maybe five of you so lucked out, or at least are so oblivious to real pains in your life that you couldn't write such a scenario.
I could.
Everybody I know could.
In fact, most people I know could write worse ones.
That's an interesting question then.
How much of our unhappiness is caused by life being hard?
The reason I pose this as a challenge is as follows.
Generally speaking, I have never, ever, ever found a relationship between life's difficulty and one's happiness or unhappiness.
Of course, there are the exceptions.
I know a man who survived Auschwitz who lost every single relative in the world and saw things that are horrifying that caused me nightmares.
This man is unhappy, and I understand why he's unhappy.
And I don't give him pep talks.
Hey, cheer up, things will look up.
By and large, however, I have not found a correlation.
In fact, I'll prove it to you.
Do you equate people who have easy lives with being happy?
I was a counselor at camps and a director at camps for a decade.
I worked with a lot of young people for a lot of summers.
I never found a relationship between hard life and unhappiness.
In fact, if I found any, it was easy life and unhappiness.
I used to feel, now I'm debating, I'm not certain, but I used to go so far as to think: woe unto the human being who did not have serious pains as a child.
I feel bad for them.
How will they be able to handle the real pains of later life?
And will they ever be grateful for any of the good that comes to them?
Since after all, going back to expectations, they have come to expect the easy life.
That is why parents who raise children free of frustrations do their children a terrible disservice.
Terrible.
Every time your kid falls and you walk over and hug and squeeze and mush and tush and make as if it's been they lost a leg, you are hurting their future.
They have not come to rely on themselves to take care of their hurts.
You've made it too easy.
When I used to announce in speeches that when my son who was three would fall, I would tell him that as soon as possible, he has to say, big deal, it's nothing.
People thought I was as close to abusive parents as you can get without being abusive.
Do you know what's so interesting?
Almost to this day, my son is nearly seven, whenever he falls, he will first look to me to see whether or not it was serious.
You watch your kid.
Your kid does the same.
And if you start, oh my God, are you all right?
They start to cry.
They got the signal that it was bad.
And you know how much I have to control myself not to go over, pick him up and hug him and kiss his bleeding knee.
But I don't.
I mean, I don't ignore it.
I say, yeah, it looks like you've got a bloody knee there, Dave.
He says, yeah, it looks like I got a bloody knee there, Dad.
Isn't that great?
You know how many bloody knees he's going to get in his life, figuratively and literally?
And to know immediately it's just a bloody knee, and I can take care of it myself.
I don't need my dad.
A lot of parents want to be needed.
We do.
We want to be needed.
It's very hard not to pick him up.
On even easier things, it's much easier to clean up after your kid than to hound them to clean up their room.
You could do it in two minutes much more effectively than hounding them for a half hour, and it ends up almost as bad as when it started.
Right?
But you've got to give the kid that pain to make a better adult.
The purpose of parenting is to produce adults, not to make loving children.
In other words, children will love you.
So life is hard.
And yet I have been with people who have lost children, the most, I think, the greatest pain that the human can endure.
And I have been with people who have lost nothing.
And if you were to spend a week living with both, you could not guess or would think it was the one who didn't lose.
And you say, well, they're really acting.
Well, I want to tell you something.
To a certain extent, I'm a behaviorist.
And this some may disagree with me on.
This one is not fully, I'm not fully convinced.
It's still in the working stages.
But I am so behaviorist that I tend to think within bounds that if you act like you're happy, you'll be happy.
And if you act like you're miserable, you'll be miserable.
I am a very big behaviorist.
I think waiting to act based on what you feel at any given moment is a recipe for neuroses in all those living around you, as much as within you.
It's worth fighting your moods.
You're going to have some despair over a breakup.
Two people lose a wallet.
One lets himself or herself despair for a week and go, woe unto me.
Oh my God, I'll have to call every credit card.
I lost this and the keys and this.
I remember my co-author is visiting here, so I'm reminded that he once rented a car and had a flat tire, which is particularly galling.
You have it on your own car, okay.
On a rented car, you want to shoot them.
But his attitude was: look, it's got to happen.
We all have a quota of miserable events that we have to fill in our lifetime.
And he was right.
That happened to me.
I have been lecturing for 18 years, and I never missed a lecture.
Two months ago, I missed a lecture for the first time.
A big one, too.
I never miss a freebie.
This was a good pain and a big audience, which I felt particularly responsible to get to.
And what was particularly going was it was only in San Diego, not Boston.
I was going to fly there.
I mean, it was a conspiracy.
I was going to fly there.
San Diego Airport was closed for fog.
Sat on the plane two and a half hours.
Finally got off and called up.
They said, it's okay.
We'll switch speakers.
You come a little later.
And I'm told, just as I'm hearing, San Diego Airport is open.
So an hour later, the plane finally gets ready to take off, and we take off.
We figured, okay, it was a nuisance.
What are you going to do?
Halfway there, there's an announcement: the wheels won't retract.
We are going back to Los Angeles.
And I remember my reaction was, it's over.
I can't get there.
And the vision, once in 18 years, what can I do?
And that's what you have to do.
I was bugged by it on a number of counts.
I was angry at the airline.
If you're already up and the wheels are out, what's the difference where you land?
That is still a riddle to me.
Somebody's got to explain that one to me.
It is truly a riddle.
That's why, I mean, that sort of stuff ticks me off.
They already know everybody's been delayed in any event four hours.
But anyway, the point is, my first reaction was to control myself, knowing I can let myself despair.
Or I could say, look, what are you going to do?
That's part of what it is all about.
You're speaking 18 years and missed one.
My God, you're a lucky guy.
That is part of it.
Obviously, that's not one of the pains that should cause unhappiness.
Every one of you probably has had some real pain.
That is part of it.
It is part of life.
Give you an example.
I never do this.
It's such a strong rule in me.
But I will deprive you of a great story or a good story if I don't.
Yesterday, I was over at George Burns' house.
It just happened that way because he listens to the show and he invited me over.
And it was a very, very fun time, as it happens.
Very sweet guy.
And I asked him, he really loved his wife.
I mean, it's not just the book.
It's not just Paul.
He really loved his wife.
So I spoke to him about that.
I said, you know, so how have you dealt with it?
And he said, I wrote it down, and I'm going to use it in the book.
He said it very simply.
He said, you know, you cry and you cry and you cry.
And then one day you stop.
That's right.
You've got to know that.
That is exactly what happens.
We cry.
There's a lot to cry about.
And by the way, crying doesn't mean you're unhappy.
Men, you should hear that.
This is not something I have to tell most women.
But men, you should know it is permissible to cry.
It is, in fact, occasionally a very good thing to do.
If you never cry, it's not a good thing.
Because there's something to cry about in life.
But that was an answer.
That is what you do.
And you go on.
And he does.
He visits her grave every month.
Talks to her.
He told her.
He told her about my show.
Is that touching?
Someone in the next world has been told about my show.
It was very, very touching.
And then what he did, which was very, very moving to me, was he would explain behavioral things that he did to take care of the grief.
The man could have sunk.
They obviously had an extraordinary marriage.
He could have sunk, and he didn't.
What you see publicly is what you see privately with pain.
Pain is not the opposite of happiness.
He is a happy man with deep pain.
You hear that?
That's very important to know.
Just like unhappiness is not tension, or tension is not unhappiness, pain is not unhappiness.
One should be able to say, I have a deep pain, and I cried and I cried, and I stopped and I move on.
And still periodically cry.
And what do you do?
I hope I'm not betraying a confidence.
He said he now sleeps on her side of the bed.
Isn't that moving?
And that helps him a great deal.
I'm a big believer in solution finding.
If you're hurting, try to find a solution.
What he didn't do was walk around and say, oh, you say, am I a victim?
Woe unto me.
Study said I had 38 years with this woman.
That's the thing.
That is your choice when life is hard.
What do you say?
You know, it's funny.
I'll give you an example that touches more personally.
It's very common when you hear a couple divorces to ask, did they have kids?
It's usually the first question.
Do they have any kids?
And if the answer is no, we say, oh, phew.
That's the normal answer to give.
It's a pretty funny answer, though, for those of us who were divorced and have a kid.
Thank God I have a kid.
Do you know what's interesting?
A friend of mine who was divorced and didn't have a child said to me when I divorced, I envy you.
You have something to show for those years.
What do I have?
I wasted my time.
You have this terrific kid, David.
Right?
Two totally different ways of looking at the exact same event.
Boy, are they lucky they don't have kids?
Or, at least he has a kid.
That is usually the options that one has in life.
That's what I said earlier on this issue.
How do you react?
That is your freedom.
That life is hard, my friends, is a given.
It is a given.
How do you react to its hardships is not a given.
The best way I could put it, and with this, I conclude and take questions.
It is the difference between fate and free will.
And the difference was put very well, I wish I knew who I would quote him or her.
But it was put as follows: Fate is the hand you are dealt.
Free will is what you do with it.
You can't change your hand.
Those are the cards you've been given.
What do you do with the cards?
That is up to you.
And that's how I would regard hardship.
You can't undo it.
My dear, dear friend Harold Kushner, whom I adore, lost his child.
Not only lost his child, but lost his child to progeria, progeria, the disease of rapid aging.
Imagine seeing your child go from eight to sixty and then die in the course of, what, four years, five years?
What did he do with it?
He has touched literally millions of lives with his books on God and suffering.
He's the one who wrote when bad things happen to good people.
And he said to me, we had very, very long dialogues together.
He said, who knows if God doesn't work in strange ways?
Could I have ever touched these lives if I didn't lose my child?
Needless to say, he would never make that trade.
Don't get me wrong.
Not for a second, of course.
But he didn't sit back and say, well, it's unfair.
Life has been disgusting to me.
Etc., etc.
That's what you do.
That's your choice.
And that was the worst.
Most of you, thank God, have not had that.
Nor have I.
So yeah, life is hard.
So I ask you again, compared to what?
Compared to cows' lives?
Or compared to humans' lives?
And is there really a relationship between hardship and unhappiness?
To the extent that there is, it's probably that hardships, to a certain extent, actually enable you to be happier.
If for no other reason, you'll appreciate all the good you do have.
Okay, let me take questions or comments on any of these or anything that may have been raised in the course of the course.
Heavy stuff today.
So I can appreciate if you don't have much to say.
Yep.
Crazy as it sounds, did you ever give a definition of what happiness means?
Crazy as it sounds, the question is: did I ever give a definition of what happiness means?
No.
And nor will I ever.
Nor will you ever.
So we're using the word that we really don't know what it means.
No, we do know what it means.
We can't define it.
There's a very big difference.
So we each are allowed to make our own definition.
You certainly are.
That is correct.
He says, are we each allowed to make our own definition?
Yes.
I'll give you an example.
I hold for happiness what I hold for almost any concept, as the Supreme Court held for obscenity.
One judge said, can't define it, but I know exactly when I see it.
Know exactly what it is, what I see it.
That's what I would say to you about happy.
And by the way, the more flexible it is, the more you realize how much brain-centered it is.
One declares oneself happy.
You know, I never told you this.
This is so amazing.
Do you know when this first hit me?
I remember it.
I was on the D-train in Manhattan.
I was in high school.
I grew up in New York.
And I used to always go from Brooklyn to Manhattan to go to museums and concerts and just walk around.
It was a great thing.
I loved it immensely.
And you know, for a teenager, it's chic to be neurotic.
It's chic to be unhappy, and especially in the 60s.
You know, you remember the photos, all the songs were very serious.
We took ourselves, you know, with the generation that took itself very seriously.
Most teenagers do, but the 60s was the worst.
It was megalomaniacal.
Anyway, I remember vividly sitting on this train, coming back from Manhattan, and saying to myself, Do you know it is the easy way out to be unhappy?
And I was raised, my father always taught us, never take the easy way out.
It's one of those, you know, we all have lines from our parents.
That was one of his lines: don't take the easy way out.
And then it occurred to me: being unhappy is the easy way out.
Any idiot could be unhappy.
It's so easy to be unhappy.
The trick is to be happy.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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