Timeless Wisdom: The Problem with Happiness - Part 12
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
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The question was, can I offer any suggestions on coping?
Remember, we had a list of tensions that life is filled with.
Can I offer suggestions on coping with the tension between work and family?
One immediate and perhaps most important that comes to mind in a specific recommendation is that there have to be regular set times that family slash spouse or better, family and or spouse, because sometimes it has to be spouse without family.
Oh, I wish I had a video camera.
Oh, God, the way this woman looked at her husband at that moment.
She practically pulled most of his left side hair out of his head.
And he's recording it, no less.
There has to be set times.
I think that women more instinctively know this, which is why it was his hair that was pulled and not hers.
For family and for spouse and for both.
As I say, I have learned this and it has been very helpful.
Whether it be you just, if you're a busy man at the office, why can't there be lunchtimes with, if it's possible to arrange, lunchtimes with your wife, or a wife busy lunchtime with your husband?
If the only time you see your spouse is in the family context and then you just fall asleep, it's not going to be very helpful for developing a relationship with your spouse and certainly not for any romance.
You know, dating has so many advantages over marriage in terms of romance.
It's planned, right?
You know you'll go out.
Nobody, very few people date five minutes before.
It's usually, you know, what are you doing Saturday night, okay?
So you have all week to prepare for Saturday night in mood, in relaxation, and getting the work out of the way, in how you look, in everything, so that that person is the overwhelming object of your attentions.
You should try to date a little, I think, when you're married.
Okay, continue dating, as it were.
Having some of those special times together.
Times with, then times that could be with the family.
If I know this, in most, I speak for men better than for women, much better.
Most men do not naturally think of the priority of life and family in terms of time.
They say, and with utter sincerity, I love my wife, I love my kids.
But in terms of time, you would never know it.
So that, I would say, is one area of coping.
Now, you want to know the coping internal mechanism because this is a course on happiness.
After all, you might argue, okay, let's say he does that, but doesn't he suffer the tension of a decline in his work, which you're nodding very strongly about, because that's really what's the subtext of your question.
I understand that.
It's not a course on a successful marriage, it's a course on happiness.
That is why I am such a big believer in making intellectual, philosophic decisions about what is important in life.
And you have to make that decision.
If, in fact, work is so overwhelmingly more important, and I don't condemn anyone for whom it is, I think that you have to strongly consider not marrying, or strongly consider not having children, until such time as you feel you are ready.
And a lot of men, by the way, do that.
A lot of men want to work their tail off in their 20s to get somewhere, to study.
They can't, you know, to finally establish a business, or at least this is the way they may think.
And then finally, at certain age, they will be able to devote more time to the family.
They don't.
That's what they think, and then they don't, because then once they're established, you have to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Well, then, you have to answer to yourself, where are your priorities?
That's what tensions are about, figuring out priorities.
I gave you the example of, I was offered years ago a radio show that would go on Friday nights.
It was so obvious to me for religious reasons that I would not work on a Friday night that it was the end of the issue.
It wasn't tempting.
I didn't feel terrible.
My priorities were clear.
The Sabbath is sacrosanct to me.
No amount of money, no prestigious position will enable me to sacrifice it.
This is why I've always related to the Christian runner in Chariots of Fire, who ironically just died of AIDS, I heard, the actor himself.
But that runner said, gold medal, wonderful, but it doesn't compare to the Sabbath.
You have to be able to say, I want to advance in my career, but not so much that that is it, except for all else.
If it is it, you shouldn't be married.
Or you should be married to someone who is willing to say, if indeed there is such a woman on the face of the earth.
And I mean that with all sincerity.
That's fine.
This is the most important thing to you.
I am absolutely secondary.
When you have time from your work, you will see me.
I know that as we go into the marriage.
She's probably lying through her teeth.
You should give her a lie detector test.
You should take her blood count and see if she is hallucinating.
But if she actually is saying that, then, all right, you know, you've been honest, she's been honest, and so on.
By the way, there might be women for whom career has that importance.
It's much less, less common.
And I don't think that that is just social.
I think it is very much part of what is the makeup of the two sexes.
But if it is societal, so fine.
It doesn't matter to me which argument prevails.
What is important is people have to understand what is important.
It is a philosophic decision.
That's why I'm a big believer on moral issues and in emotional issues like this, that at very calm moments, like a Tuesday night in mid-February, people sit down and decide what's important to them.
You can't decide it all of a sudden in the middle of seeing your family fall apart.
It may be very well too late.
You must know at calm moments.
When I ask high school kids, would you save your dog or a stranger first if both were drowning?
Their favorite answer is, well, I don't know.
You know, how do you know what you'll do in such a moment?
It's a real difficult thing to know.
I don't know.
I love my dog.
Okay?
I say, so I say, you have to decide now while your dog isn't drowning, what are your values?
Is your dog whom you love more important than the stranger that you don't love?
You must decide when it is calm in life what is truly important to you.
And then live by it.
That's why I'm a big believer in the place of the intellect in the arena of happiness.
It's not the only thing in happiness, but it's a cool, calm, collected decision.
I can tell you this: a rabbi once made a very powerful point, I think, on one of my radio shows.
He said, with all the dying men that he has been to visiting in hospitals, he never met one who said on that bed, gee, I wish I spent more time at the office.
Okay?
It is a very, very important point for men to remember.
Because I know as well as any man in this room, as well as any man in America, I am very ambitious, I am very devoted to my work, etc.
And when I get involved, there is nothing else in the world.
I know that I'm writing an article or I'm on the phone all day or something, and you know, just everything can drift away.
The time just flies.
Oh, my God.
And that is why these are decisions that one has to make intellectually.
And then all of a sudden, you realize, okay, so fine, you'll sacrifice.
You won't be a partner in the law firm that fast.
That is correct.
I submit to you, and this was really from last term, when I argued that one of the obstacles to happiness is the belief that success makes you happy.
If you believe that, you have bought a very you bought the Brooklyn Bridge, the proverbial bridge.
There's a very simple way to prove that, which I elaborated on last term, and that is ask highly successful people if that is what has brought them happiness.
And you will find in every instance that I have tried this out, if they think it does, then what they're doing is trying to become more successful.
They don't stop.
The acquisitions don't stop.
The leverage buyouts won't stop.
They're looking for new companies won't stop.
They're trying for yet, because once you're a partner in that law firm, what happens?
First of all, you still have to go up the list.
It's endless.
And then let's say you're number one, but there are 10 bigger law firms.
You've never been successful.
And successful, my God.
Look at the people who are getting nominated to the Supreme Court, and you're just a partner in a law firm.
Look at the ones who are on television.
And you never got on TV, maybe once when they needed to know something about litigation in your area.
It's endless.
It's endless, endless, endless.
You write books, it's not a bestseller.
What's so great?
Don't you see?
I realize this.
Thank God.
Thank God I realized this at a young age.
I got published very young.
And boy, the thought of being published by Simon Schuster, it was exciting for a day.
For a day?
What was important then?
I started realizing it's quicksand.
Success is quicksand.
Because once it was published by Simon Schuster, the next thing was, how come they're not advertising our book?
It's dying.
It's dying.
It's Simon Schuster.
We haven't seen it.
It's just true to this day.
The book was published, the first book was published 15 years ago.
Simon Schuster was never taken out a single ad.
Okay?
So I could spend my time.
I never took out an ad, forget it.
It's unbelievable.
We're finished.
And then it's endless.
Then we get an advance on the next book, Simon Schuster in Advance.
But then we find out another guy got so much more in advance, it made us look like nothings.
He's in the meantime thinking he's a nothing because he heard what Michner got for an advance.
And Michner gets an advance just by saying, let me look at the globe.
Caribbean, $10 million, Caribbean sold to Michner.
That's all he has to do.
The rest of us, we have to pour over.
I submit a book.
I'm lucky if it gets $10,000 after I submit the book.
Finally, on the third book, they only needed a long outline, which took me half the time it would take to write a book to write that for Strunken outline.
I should have written the book in that time.
But don't you see it's endless?
It's endless.
I seem to somebody to be very successful.
I could show you 20 areas where there are people 20 times more successful than I.
It's endless, endless.
When a man realizes, and I'm just addressing, if there are women who are caught in this, it's obviously just as true.
But it's a man asking, it's usually a man's problem, and it's usually a woman's problem married to such a man.
I say to you, it's quicksand.
Because you can become partner in the firm.
You can become CEO.
And so what?
That day you'll be happy when you're CEO, then you'll spend lunches with your wife.
Right?
But at least, by the way, if that were true, at least if you even made that vow, honey, as soon as I am a partner, daily lunch.
Okay, at least she knows.
He becomes a partner.
It ends.
Now, if you believe that, however, he too should have his blood checked and this and a lie detective has because he's lying through his teeth, even though he thinks he's sincere.
That is the beauty of Hillel's doctrine.
Hillel, who was asked to summarize everything said he made, ⁇ If I am not for me, who will be for me?
Imanilatz meani, but if I am only for me, then what am I?
And then the third part seems to be a non-sequitur.
And if not now, ve mloach sha, ve matai.
If not now, then when?
What does that have to do?
If I am not for me, who will be?
And if I am only for me, then what am I?
That's the whole point.
If not now, when?
If you don't start having lunches with your wife now, or breakfasts or dinners, or if you don't start taking your kids out and having time with it, when are you going to do it?
When they're 30 and they don't want to look at your face?
No, that is why that rabbi's comment had an impact.
And by the way, these words are addressed as much to me as to any of you.
These are tough things to assimilate.
But they're critical, critical.
On the other hand, women remember one thing.
It's very important.
You don't want a man who isn't ambitious.
Most women don't want a man who does not want to be successful in his career because he's not radiating what is a very attractive thing to a woman.
A nest builder, a protector, strength.
Even what's her name?
Who's the famous woman television anchor?
Television?
Barbara Walters.
Barbara Walters is about as successful as you can get in her field, right?
But she wanted someone richer than her.
It is classic.
It was classic.
There are about four men in America who fit that bill.
She married one of them.
She wouldn't give me the time of day, Barbara.
Very, very important.
Women want that in men, and women remember that, too.
That's part of what makes your husband lovable, is that he is a go-getter.
He is a hustler.
You wouldn't want a guy who says, honey, I love to romp in bed every day with you.
To hell with the office.
Let's just hug.
Sounds good.
For a day.
Okay, that's important for women to remember that, too.
Because this is a trait that makes men, men, wanting to go out in the outer world and conquer.
So that's a classic tensions attention that a woman has, either vis-a-vis herself or vis-a-vis her husband as well.
Knowing how much in each direction.
That's why I say life is filled with these tensions.
So a very long answer to a very good and short question.
Take one more before I go on, yes?
With the goal in mind of raising a child to be an adult, because we spoke about that.
Remember, you're not raising just a 10-year-old, you are raising a 30-year-old.
And as I think I put it to you, remember, we are far more adults than children in our lives.
And it is very important.
Well, that's a good question.
What are the specific things?
I'd have to work that out and come back with an answer to you, because I don't want to answer off the top of my head.
Only to give you some quick reflections, because I'm going to write that down.
Okay, well, for one thing, there are two areas that come to mind immediately.
One is emotional stability, giving a child what the child needs emotionally, which is, I think, obvious.
I'm not saying parents do it well, but at least it's obvious.
That's well known.
I think the less obvious parts are, for some, tougher.
And that is teaching, raising the child to become an independent human being, to become self-reliant.
It's very interesting.
In the Talmud, I just don't remember all the things.
It says a father is obligated to teach a child the following, and one of them is to swim.
I mean, it's really, it's funny.
You know, it's got Talmud, you know, it's got all the, you know, it's got all the religious things, and then to swim.
Maybe that's part of Jews' thinking because they'll always have to flee a pogrom, unfortunately.
I always thought that that might be an underlying element.
But in any event, the more you could teach a child to be self-reliant, don't spoil a child, because then they'll be a spoiled adult.
That's a very important area.
Have a child do things as a child that bring self-esteem.
You know, we all speak about inculcating self-esteem in children, but your telling your child you're wonderful, you're wonderful, you're wonderful, as important as that is, doesn't do as much as the child thinking I'm wonderful for doing things that are wonderful.
It's a very important, very important part here.
Self-esteem comes from peers, self-esteem comes from self, self-esteem comes from parents, self-esteem comes from society.
So I would develop whatever trait, you know how the best answer is?
Here's really the most honest answer to you.
Whatever you think is important in an adult, try to start developing in your child.
That's the good part of being an adult if you look into yourself.
What is it about me or another adult that I know that I think is important to have as an adult?
Am I working in any way to inculcate those things in my child?
That is why, I mean, for me personally, we all have our maybe idiosyncrasies is a good word, bad word, I don't know, but for me, I know that I think it's very important for people not to complain a lot.
And it's just, I like inculcating in children gratitude rather than kvetching.
Gee, why don't I have this dress?
Why don't I have this thing?
Why don't I have this Nintendo?
I mean, you know, my son tells me my son has six Nintendo games.
Six, for God's sake.
Is that a joke?
Including the mutant ninja turtles.
Okay, just want you to know that.
Do you know?
He came home.
I think he has a friend who has 40.
My son feels deprived.
He has six Nintendos.
And he feels deprived because Yitzchak, or whatever his name is, has 40.
40, the guy has a lending library, for God's sake.
Really, he could make money, Yitzhak, on just renting out Nintendo games.
I don't want my son to complain about that.
If you walk around life, it's an early age that I want him to know what an adult can do.
Because we don't do that with Nintendos.
We do it with cars.
We do it with husbands.
We do it with wives.
Look at this wife.
Look at that husband.
Look at those kids.
Look at the house.
Look at their vacations.
Look at their bank book.
He does it with Nintendos.
That's all.
It's the only difference.
It's good to start.
You got six.
Be happy with six.
That's the key.
So I really, I don't even think I have to come back with an answer except to say to you, what you value an adult, inculcate early in children, lovingly and so on.
But still, that is why it's worth knowing what are the traits that make for a happy adult.
That's why this stuff is important.
That's why I believe, both when I teach Judaism and when I teach these courses, that it's more important to talk to adults.
Very frequently, when I go around the country lecturing, people say, oh, if you only could have talked to the kids.
Well, let me tell you something.
Last week I gave a talk in one of the southern states at a university.
I talked to college kids.
The next night I talked to adults.
The second lecture was more valuable.
You can change an adult in a lecture.
You can't change a kid in a lecture.
Adults are deeper, more mature, more rational.
An adult hears a convincing idea.
They say, yeah, that's what I should do.
Not kids, generally speaking.
An exceptional kid might.
I know this.
It took a month to touch a kid daily immersion in Judaism, a month.
When I was director of the Brandeis Bardeen Institute and we had college sessions.
On the other hand, I get letters all the time from people who read one article.
You know what?
Great arguments for keeping kosher.
I'm going to start.
It would never happen in one lecture to a college kid.
Okay?
That is why it's important to talk to adults.
Adults know what's important.
They start inculcating that in the kids as early as possible.
Ladies and gentlemen, last week there were, in the last two weeks, there have been two themes that I have been working on.
One is enjoy life.
The other is, which we began near the end, of depth.
I'm going to go back to depth and in depth, develop depth.
But first I want to give you two very quick recommendations on the enjoy under the enjoy life heading that we have been talking about.
Actually, it's really, they're very much related and maybe not even two separate things.
I actually owe this to my mother-in-law, who I promised to cite in the book.
It's a small point, but one that without having read it in a letter that she wrote to my wife and me, I would not have been as aware of.
It is critical in life to have something to look forward to.
It is the only well, only is too strong, but nearly only Almost insoluble depression to come in life when there is nothing to look forward to, when there is no possible light at the end of the tunnel.
Except obviously you're on your deathbed, but people make peace with dying.
Most people do.
Most healthy people do.
And there you try to look back towards a life of having done things.
And I'm going to talk about the deathbed as a source of happiness in life, oddly enough.
I don't mean that it makes you happy, but thinking of it in those terms having a good effect on you.
But having something to look forward to is very important.
We can somehow deal with just about anything if we know that there is something to look forward to.
I think that that is important that you have that in life.
For example, a vacation.
It is really possible to endure a lot of months of work if you know, well, in July or in January, whatever it'll be, you're going to go on a vacation.
That's why vacations are very important.
People perceive that.
But the funny part is, half of its importance is the anticipation.
And that's true about a lot of the fun things of life.
Half of the joy is truly the anticipation.
You tell your kids you're going to take them to Magic Mountain, and they are looking forward to Magic Mountain, and the looking forward to it is just as good, sometimes better, than actually being there.
So it is something to keep in mind for yourself, to have for yourself, what do you really enjoy to do and look forward to, and try to incorporate that into your life.
In that regard, related, I also believe in another little thing to get through life's tribulations, and that is little rewards.
They don't have to be big, but it is good to have rewards.
Unless you're an ascetic, in which case, your reward is your deprivation.
But I'm speaking to primarily a Jewish crowd, and a Jewish ascetic is an oxymoron.
So in this regard, I would say to you that having little rewards for yourself, and it's important that they be little, because if you make them huge, it could become addictive.
But for example, you know, most people like to buy themselves something.
And a lot of people like to buy themselves a lot of things.
Some people can stop buying themselves things.
But I would recommend to you to try to have that ability as a reward to yourself after something painful that you have to do is done.
For example, I get myself, and for everyone, it'll seem trivial, but life is composed of these little details.
It is a pain to put out an issue of my newsletter in every way possible.
The writing is painful, the editing is doubly painful, the typesetting is painful, the mailing is painful.
It's all painful.
But there are two rewards after it.
One is the issue.
But that's not enough.
I am not that wonderful.
I get myself something at the end.
I'll either get a couple of compact discs or I'll get myself a pipe.
I know this is a scandal to some of you.
I understand.
It's only for a collection, God forbid.
I would never think of smoking it.
I just like to look at them.
I already lost listeners on my radio show for admitting I'm a pipe smoker, so why should I alienate you too?
The only state on earth where you alienate people by saying you smoke a pipe, be that as it may, I get myself something.
I think that women, If who work should do the same thing, but let's say a woman is at home.
There is nothing more relentless than housework.
Nothing.
There's nothing men do that compares in its non-satisfaction, I am convinced.
Even if he puts pencil erasers on pencils in a factory, that compares to running a house.
Because the moment you have done the dishes, they are then redirtied.
He doesn't have that.
When I have an issue out, it's out.
It's not, nobody, they don't put it in a shredder and I have to write it again.
But women have that.
Or your kid, you finally, the kid is puked, and the kid has diarrhea, and you have finally cleaned it.
Then pukes again.
That's it.
And who appreciates it?
Does your husband come home and say, oh my god, he puked Christ, I got to know what to say to you, God bless.
And even if he does, it doesn't quite, in your mind, you know, rival what he just did at the store or at the law firm or in his business.
Women in particular, believe it or not, because men's work is often often built-in rewards, as my issue would have as winning a case, as selling more widgets.
Work by definition, as a farmer has.
A farmer sees the wheat.
But women don't have that.
They have it when the kid is 20.
After all of the puking and all the screaming and all the yelling and everything, then they look and they see a 20, and just as they can enjoy it, they leave.
Men don't have that.
They enjoy their work.
It's still there.
The widgets are sold.
He gets something.
All this work on the kids, and then they leave and rarely thank you and then don't call.
So it is.
No, I beg men here to understand what women who do run a home have to deal with.
You know, when I hear men, and I admit that these are all things I had to learn, these are not wisdoms that came to me naturally as a young man, believe me.
But when I hear men today romanticize raising children, romanticize being a homemaker, I want to punch them.
I have one question to ask them.
Did you ever do it for a week?
If you did it for a week and still feel that way, at least you have some credibility.
But if you haven't done it for more than a day when your wife got the grip one day and couldn't do it and you went bananas or ordered in all the food and used paper dishes, paper cups, paper underwear, paper clothing in a paper house, that's very different.
That's not what she does.
Men have to appreciate this fact.
It is a relentless task without immediate rewards.
The rewards are so far down the line and then very ephemeral.
Because as I say, the best reward a mother could have is a child who becomes independent of her.
That's the joke.
I mean, you know, so what do you say then?
Look, I mean, look, there is some satisfaction, but your satisfaction is not the same as other ones that are more immediate and permanent within your geographical surroundings.
So I believe that it is important to reward ourselves.
What you want to try to do is to do it after a painful task that you had to do.
That's why if you're dieting, I know good diets tell you you have to every so often cheat, or you will go mad.
You will absolutely go mad.
And that is why, by the way, I don't want to make a big deal about this, but that is why I am a believer in having certain joys in life, even if there is, if they are not absolutely safe, is there some possibility I will get lip cancer?
Yes, there is.
I don't know anybody who ever did.
Millions of people have smoked pipes.
I don't know anybody who did.
I'm sure it's a possibility.
It's a possibility I will die in a car crash.
It's a fact, it's a greater possibility than lip cancer.
I am willing to take the risk for the pleasure of my pipe.
I'm not willing to take a risk with cigarette smoking where the risk is simply higher.
I don't live to be healthy.
I really do live partially to enjoy life.
I want to.
You understand?
It's a philosophic thing that you have to do.
If you can get away with smoking two cigarettes a day, smoke two cigarettes a day.
Most people can't.
Most people, it just builds and it builds and it builds.
If you love something and it isn't the healthiest and there is nothing lovable that is healthy, I mean, do you understand?
I mean, how many people, I'll reward myself today, I'll have a carrot.
Right?
I mean, it doesn't happen.
After a hard day, celery doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
You know what particularly is for you.
Is it another pair of shoes?
I'm dead serious.
Try, however, not to have it that you only enjoy $200 shoes.
No, that's very important.
That's the key.
And believe me, the irony is, if shopping is a real pleasure for you, and you can't curb it entirely, and shouldn't, by the way, what you should at least do is get satisfaction from the cheaper stuff.
Most shopping satisfaction is from the shopping, not the amount.
Remember that.
A cheap pair of shoes is as fun to buy as an expensive pair of shoes for most people.
If, unless, unless, you know, and Melda Marcos aside for a minute.
No, no, no.
It is a very important thing to know that.
I mean, if you only buy a few pairs a year, and then it's not the shopping, it's the utilitarian value.
You want a good pair of shoes, fine, that's different.
But if it's just the act of shopping, please know that that is the pleasure.
And I relate to that.
I've always said, depression, go shopping, it helps.
I do.
I relate to that.
The trick is, though, I don't go out and buy expensive stuff at that point.
It's fun, you know, just go out and keep your tastes in a certain arena.
And I think that that is very helpful.
Now, we've spoken a lot about that.
I want to develop the point about depth.
I said to you last week, you should seek depth more than you should seek happiness, and you will be a happier human being.
The only way, however, for that to work is for you to truly believe that depth is more important than happiness.
Did I elaborate on this last week?
That you can't fool yourself?
You can't say, I'll be deep because I really want to be happy.
Good.
Okay, so you know that.
I'm going to prove it to you.
Did I give you the example of the retarded child?
No.
Here's an example a philosopher wrote recently to make the point that depth is more important than happiness.
I read it recently.
Let us say you knew a person, a child, 15-year-old, who is somewhat mentally retarded and quite happy, which, by the way, is quite possible.
And a drug was in fact invented to undo the retardation, enabling the child to lead a normal life and by definition be less happy.
I suspect 99% of us would give the child a drug.
That was a great example to my mind to prove that virtually every one of us really does prefer depth to happiness.
If you could be happy and less fully human, you would opt to be fully human and less happy.
I don't remember the philosopher who said it, but he said, what is it?
I'd rather be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig.
That's the point.
I would rather, that is why I began this whole course by saying, if you think of happiness entirely in terms of feelings, then you should envy animals.
Your dog, that I could say as a given, knowing this audience to the extent that I know any socioeconomic group, your dog is almost constantly happy.
Your dog veers between regular happy and ecstasy.
Okay?
Ours does.
Ours does.
Except when, you know, chas veshalom, hebben for fend, we put her in a kennel.
But that is very rare, and we have very deep guilt, and we get unhappier than she, and then it's a whole vicious cycle, and then we're angry at her for making us guilty.
Anyway, otherwise, your dog is very happy.
Would you like to be a dog?
I mean, it's better to be a dog than it was to be a human in Auschwitz, but you're not an Auschwitz.
You have normal human miseries, not abnormal human miseries.
And on the human level, I give you the example of retardation versus normalcy with lesser happiness attributed to normalcy.
For my life, there's just no question depth is number one.
Number one, whatever it will bring in its wake.
Many people, and in America in particular, well, I take that back.
Many people.
Americans have a specific way of doing this, but in my travels I've seen more primitive ways.
I would say that a vast majority of people live life to get through it.
And there's a simple proof.
What do you do when you don't have to work?
That is the litmus test to whether or not depth is important to you.
What do you do when you don't have to work?
In many parts of the world, people spend hours a day playing cards.
When I was on the island of Bali, I saw men spend good parts of their days at cockfights, betting at cockfights.
In America, it's television, sports, and television.
It's a very good indicator.
What do you do when you don't have to work?
Tells you how important growing, and that was the term we used last week, growing is to you.
For most Americans, it is not important.
That is why it is, I mean, just to give a very immediate example, the number of excellent courses at this university for adults is absolutely, it's like a candy store for the brain.
The average course has 15 students.
The vast majority of people of the same backgrounds are at home.
And what are they doing at home?
Watching television.
Watching television is the single most non-growth activity a human can engage in.
I have said on radio, and I believe it, you would get deeper watching a lima bean plant grow than watching television.
Because at least as you looked at the plant, you would think it is spoon-fed.
You know what it is?
It is Nintendo for adults television.
Just as I try to wean my son away who is seven from Nintendo and have limits on how much he could sit and have people gobble each other up and warp onto a third level.
But why is that any different from 99% of the television that we have?
And ladies and gentlemen, I include in particular the news.
Do not fool yourself into thinking, well, I don't watch TV.
I only watch the news.
You are as much Nintendoized as anybody who watches the Wheel of Fortune.
The only difference is they don't claim that they're growing.
You do.
They are more honest, the watchers of Wheel of Fortune.
They know it's strictly for the entertainment.
And I will prove to you it is strictly entertainment.
If you videoed tonight's news, you wouldn't give a damn to watch it tomorrow.
But you would read tomorrow, today's newspaper, tomorrow.
Indeed, with a good newspaper, you would read it next week.
Indeed, with the New York Times, America's best newspaper by far, you would read it a month later.
It's challenges.
It has depth.
And I don't agree with its political position, so you understand I'm hardly here to advocate a newspaper.
That's why I am passionate on the issue of television.
It is cockfighting.
It is cards playing.
It is the modern form of that dreadful phrase, killing time.
Killing time means I am waiting to drop dead.
I work to make a living, and when I don't have to work, I kill time.
I will sit back to be entertained.
It's a tough litmus test for people.
What do you do when you don't have to do your work?
But that's the best way I can phrase to you how important it is to get deeper.
By the way, let me give you a phrase here from the Talmudic Tractate Ethics of the Fathers that is very helpful.
All beginnings are difficult.
It is very hard to start on a lifetime program of getting deeper.
All beginnings are difficult.
It gets much easier as you go on.
Much easier.
My friends, if you embark on what I now ask you, I promise you, in 90% of the cases, I know what will happen.
I ask you to cut in half or simply drop television watching for a month.
If you feel you'll miss something important, there's a great device.
It's called the video cassette recorder.
I don't mean that at all flippantly.
If there's something you're dying to see, record it.
60 minutes will be just as relevant or irrelevant a month from now.
It's not timely.
It's irrelevant.
As you know, they made it three months ago anyway.
They're only airing it next Sunday night.
Whatever it might be.
By the way, I don't mind at all if you have a favorite stupid show.
In fact, that to me is just as valid by far.
You have a sitcom you like, you know what's your name?
What's wrong?
There's nothing wrong with having pleasure.
Absolutely.
Video that too.
Do you know that you could set your video to come on the same time each week for four weeks?
Maybe two weeks in your case, or if you're really in the underclass, six days.
I'm telling you, give it a try, and here's what to do instead: read.
Read.
Even if you're only in the beginning reading pop novels, there is infinitely more brain usage in reading an Erica Jung novel than there is in watching the news.
And I'm trying to take the extremes.
Start a course in something.
Pick up a language.
I bet every one of you has been outside of the United States, and if you've been to a foreign-speaking country, didn't you have what it would be like if I could speak the language?
Try it.
Try it.
Some of you are gifted linguistically, others are not, but every one of you can make headway.
The Romance languages are easier than the Germanic, the Germanic are easier than the Slavic, the Slavic are easier than the Oriental.
And it goes like that.
Try something.
Imagine any of you who are religiously inclined, if you're a Jew, to actually see the things in Hebrew, what a lift it would give you, or if you're a Christian, to see the New Testament in Greek.
Do you know there are only 22 letters in Hebrew?
Just 22 letters.
Do you know when I studied Russian as an undergraduate in college?
We came in on a Monday.
We were told that on Wednesday we would have a quiz on the entire Russian alphabet, which is 32 letters.
You know, big deal.
Now, it's actually easier than Hebrew because Hebrew, they're all different, whereas half of the Russian alphabet is the same, though unfortunately, a lot of those that are the same are different.
An H is an N, a P is an R.
So you go a little crazy.
But big deal.
Chinese doesn't work that way.
Arabic doesn't work that way.
But there is so much, and I told you this last week.
Find something.
Just do it instead of television.
You have so much time.
Look, you're taking this course.
But there are so many other things like this available.
Look where you are.
My God, I'm not speaking to people in the middle of a tiny rural place where the only event in the city may be bingo.
And you have to travel miles to hear a string quartet.
Take up something.
That is if you want to be deeper.
But remember, I challenged you with this comment.
If you find people boring, and I especially say this to singles who date, remember, they may be saying the same thing about you after the date.
Very important.
What makes people interesting is depth.
This will become very meaningful to you.
It is one of the reasons that this society so does not value old age and so regards getting older as getting unhappier.
For those who value depth and see that as the greatest source of pleasure in many ways in life, getting older without romanticizing getting older with the physical ailments that may accompany it, but in many instances and increasingly in America that is not the case until very, very old age.
Which is advancing that whatever very, very old is becomes a decade more every 20 years or so now But in America not valuing it there is nothing good about getting older Everything we value is fun oriented Everyone wants to be happy.
It's a very simple equation happiness for most in our society equals fun More fun is associated with being young By the way if they ever show happy older people they're having fun Right?
Oh look at all the golf they can play like isn't that terrific?
Oh my God, that is what is worth getting older for I could play golf every day, not just on weekends for this I live But this is the truth for you you graduate from television to golf That is what that is the American dream
If you value depth, getting older has an incredibly good thing, you have more time to deepen and then you really do get deeper.
Once you start, you keep digging and you get deeper.
It's one of the best parts.
When I think of getting older, I think that I'll have more clarity.
That gives me a very great calm about getting older.
The interest that I've always had have never been, in any event, wonderful to have when you're young.
I've been very lucky in this regard.
Since I have always been, I've always gravitated towards, towards depth.
I don't know why it's probably half luck and half parents and half tradition and half God knows what.
But whatever it might be, that was three halves, I recognize.
All the things that motivated me which set me apart very much from my own generation, I remember the looks I got from friends at college when they would go to Puerto Rico during winter break and I go to Bulgaria, which is exactly what would happen.
They'd lie in the sun and I would be living with a family, which is exactly what I did, in Sofia, Bulgaria, or in Lublin, Poland, or in Budapest, Hungary.
And believe me, theirs was more pleasurable.
It wasn't all fun traveling to the 65 countries I went, most of them alone.
But wow, what I have from it, of course I'm happier for it.
And what it has given me in later life, it's just been more worthwhile than three PhDs.
I was very lucky.
This is something to cultivate in a child, that depth is more important than fun.
There's something.
If you can value something as an adult, there is an example of something to try to inculcate in a child.
That is, by the way, I'm sorry that I will be coming to this topic more frequently in the last four sessions, but it is one of the reasons, quite aside from theological beliefs, that I am so pro-religion.
If I know nothing about People.
I only know one is religious and one is completely irreligious.
I assume the religious one is deeper.
I don't assume he's kinder necessarily.
I don't assume he's more successful or anything else, but I do assume that.
Because religion, all things being equal, of course, there are some superficial religious human beings, of course.
But all things being equal, religion asks deep questions, makes deep demands, is a flirtation with the eternal that the rest of the secular stuff is not.
And you know that because if you ever really want the deepest of deep answers, you start to think in religious terms, or speaking to someone if you know who is religious, or going to a rabbi, a priest, or a minister, who may be much less intelligent than you in brain matter, but you know has been spending a life asking certain types of questions.
I finally had to make peace with the fact that by absolute no design whatsoever, nearly every single friend of ours turns out to be religious.
Mormon, Christian, Catholic, doesn't matter.
I was invited to a Muslim's home in Los Angeles.
We have so little in common in so many areas and in some ways great tension.
But the questions were similar.
The concerns, the reactions to life, it asks deeper stuff.
So I end this portion of the course with an affirmation of the pursuit of depth.
If you like pop music, give classical a chance.
It's deeper.
My attitude, I told you, my attitude is I have always envied people who had a joy that I wasn't having.
When I would see people shaking, just loving the Beethoven quartets, I knew, all right, give it another chance.
Even though to this day, I don't really like Beethoven's quartets.
But I'm told my music lovers, Dennis, if you really plug at it, you don't know the richness of the late quartets.
So I'm plugging.
And let me tell you, Frank Sinatra's songs are much more immediately satisfying.
Pop music, movie themes are much more immediately appealing.
One of the things about depth is that it's not immediate.
By definition, it's not immediately appealing.
It's worth making the effort.
The news is immediately appealing.
It's in living color.
It's got action video.
And it's superficial in the extreme because they will still be reading the great novels 100 years from now, but except for people who pursue trivia of the 20th century, who's going to watch Dan Rather?
And think of the time you've spent with him, or Peter Jennings or Tom Broko.
That's the point.
Seek the deeper stuff.
It works.
It works.
Now, on to a new subject.
One of the, if there will be anything unique in my book, I think this will be one of the things.
In all the books on happiness that I have seen, I have not seen a very strong, I haven't even seen a mild, argument made for the following.
Goodness is a quality that is instrumental to being happy.
Overwhelmingly, the argument for being good is made on moral grounds, but it becomes a tautology.
You should be moral because it's moral.
Which I believe, obviously.
You should be good to people because I value goodness.
But it's a course on happiness.
It's a book on happiness.
Ladies and gentlemen, I make an audacious claim.
All things being equal, that's important.
I can't take into account every individual consideration.
Goodness brings much more happiness, much more than selfishness.
There are a few reasons for this.
One of them is so obvious that it probably would elude you if I asked you to write why you think it would be true.
And that is this.
Generally speaking, good people get treated more good.
Now, I will prove it to you.
I have known men who are not terribly honest in their business dealings.
In fact, who are somewhat thugs.
White-collar thugs.
Not of the variety.
They weren't counterfitting $20 bills.
But they would cheat if they could get away with it.
They cheated.
I've known them, and one of the incredibly consistent traits they have had is that they were convinced that everybody is out to cheat them.
The reward of being a cheat is that you think everybody treats you just like you treat them.
Honest people do not walk around thinking, who's cheating me?
He's out to get me.
He's out.
Keep your hands in your pocket.
It's not necessary, and it's not naivete.
It's not necessary to hold that.
But it is a remarkable thing.
I am convinced that the bad do sleep worse at night.
All things being equal.
All things being equal.
If you have insomnia for physiological reasons, I can't account for that.
If you have terrible problems with your children and you're a good person, then you're not sleeping because of the problems with the children.
That's all understood.
That's why I say all things being equal.
But it is very important to understand this idea, and I don't mean it in the karma sense.
What you do comes back to you.
It's too mystical for me.
Even though I do believe that, I don't believe it mystically.
I believe it in reality.
It generally happens.
It's like telling a lie.
Telling a lie has a horrible effect because you have to remember the lie you told.
I would love to pour into the brains of honest people and into the brains of liars.
It would be like one is a polluted brain and the other one is pristine clear.
You remember the law you told, and you have to remember how you told it and all the things about it, and then you have to lie again, probably because there was a detail there that you forgot and you have to lie on.
And so on and so on and so forth.
It's true in business, it is true in any area of life.
I am convinced that while at any given time the bad way may be more immediately rewarding, you, after all, you cheat on the test, you may get into a better place.
In the long run, I think the argument for goodness on happiness grounds prevails in the long run, though.
It does not work at any given moment.
You know, parents call me up on the station, and I get this not infrequently.
How you keep talking about goodness, Dennis?
How can we tell our kids to be honest when it's a dog-eat-dog rat race out there?
Well, I just don't agree with that approach.
You teach your children, there are people out there who would try to skin you alive, that is true, but you are obligated to be better.
And yes, in some cases, it will be in that immediate moment to your disadvantage.
That is true.
But you will have benefit number two.
Benefit number one was you get treated in return.
Okay?
And I think we can all vouch for that in our lives.
By the way, some will say, well, I'm good and people are always stepping over me.
Well, I always find that to be an interesting thing.
The good people I know haven't been stepped on.
If you're stepped on, that may be another problem.
But it is not your goodness that is causing you to be stepped on.
It might be your naivete about people.
It might be foolish decisions that you have made.
I mean, you could be a good person, but it doesn't mean that you still walk in certain neighborhoods at 2 a.m. whistling the Ku Klux Klan theme.
Okay?
It is not a good idea.
And so on.
I mean, we do not ask for trouble if it is, if trouble is what you will get, and so on.
I don't suggest these things.
So I don't accept this.
I'm good, and so I am stepped on.
I don't believe that.
You may be good and stepped on, but they're not related.
When you have to fight, fight.
Good people fight.
Good doesn't mean meek.
Good doesn't mean weak.
And bad doesn't mean strong.
It's another thing I tell parents to teach their kids.
Bad is weak.
It takes no effort to be bad.
It takes a lot of strength to be good.
Any jackass can be bad.
Big deal.
It's a thing in this society and in most societies that has to be understood.
Now, the first reward was the way people treat you.
The second reward is self-image.
People who are good like themselves.
People who are not good don't like themselves.
There's nothing to like.
Now, it is possible for a thug to have a good self-image in terms of I am the best thug around.
I'm very serious.
In other words, that's an accomplishment.
The guys who run these super cocaine things in Colombia may very well have good self-images.
And some, this is important.
Some good people may not have such good self-images.
Just did an interview with people who wrote the book on the rescuers of Jews in the Holocaust, the most elaborate study ever made.
And they found that there was no correlation between self-image and likelihood to be a rescuer, which I felt very vindicated on, because I have always thought that this was extraordinarily overblown, this California tendency to constantly speak of self-image, self-image.
I think self-image is important for happiness.
I don't think self-image is important with regards to moral behavior.
And the two are not always related.
But I believe that in terms of liking yourself, the good like themselves more.
You look in the mirror and you're proud.
I didn't give in.
I didn't give in.
I didn't cheat on that thing, even though I could have, and so on.
You start to gradually build up self-admiration.
I have to give a personal example, even though I hate to.
I really do hate to, but I have no choice in such a course.
I started an anti-cheating campaign in high school.
I stopped cheating on tests very early in my freshman year.
I had, like a lot of other kids, in the eighth grade and in the beginning of the ninth, and then I just stopped and I never returned to it.
And it was very interesting.
I recall it like it's yesterday.
While I thought it was unethical, and still do, and argue against more on moral grounds, I remember the single most important image that I had about cheating was a very strong destructiveness of my own self-worth.
I felt like I was groveling.
And my own sense of dignity was violated by cheating on a test.
And so I actually felt better about myself getting lower grades than the kids who got higher grades and cheated a few points.
I know that for a fact.
I remember it.
It is true.
It has stayed with me as a very powerful example.
And I hold that to be true about anyone who withstands the pressures of the market or whatever to be dishonest.
That the sense of self-worth is very much enhanced.
A sense of, I just don't give in.
And then you look at yourself, you like yourself better.
I think that these are important traits with regard to goodness.
Third, the third reward of goodness is the act itself.
Acts of loving kindness make you happier.
It is one of my arguments, this is totally tangential for God's existence, that God created a world wherein goodness is its own emotional reward.
But it is, and you all know that.
You all know that if you know what the difference between selfish fun and goodness is?
Everything is inverted.
We look tremendously forward to fun, have it, and don't feel any better about ourselves.
We never look forward to acts of selflessness, then do it and feel terrific.
Who gets up in the morning and says, oh, I want another day to go to the nursing home and visit the elderly?
Or whatever it might be?
Gee, God, would I love today to volunteer for a local charity?
Of course not.
You get up and you want to shop, or you get up and you want to go to a ball game or watch TV and so on.
Everything militates against doing good, except that when you've done it, you feel terrific.
You also feel a drop self-righteous because you look at all the people who didn't do it that day and say, look at the scum of the earth.
They're all on the freeway with me.
They should all clear a path for St. Dennis as he drives down.
Which is okay.
It's okay.
You should feel that you've done better.
You have.
There's no reason not to.
You can't wear it on your sleeves, but it is appropriate.
That this is not cultivated in our times is so sad to me that people don't know how doing good for others.
You know, the trouble, as I told you, the thing I most wanted to avoid in this class and in the book are clichés.
But here comes one.
Giving is better than receiving.
I hate to say it.
I feel like a jerk saying it.
But the act of giving is a tremendous receiver for the giver.
That is why, talking again, I'm glad you asked me this because I have so many of these things.
It is good to take kids to do acts of goodness.
Let them feel the good feeling that comes with it.
Our daughter's school went to visit, what was it, a nursing home?
Went to a nursing home.
And these kids, who were absolutely normal 13-year-old heavy metal lovers and rock music lovers and sports lovers and hormone lovers, If you told them, isn't it great today, you kids are going to go to a nursing home.
You could only imagine their reaction, and our daughter and I suspect, many of the others.
She was on a high when she returned, but it is.
It is literally not something that you can ever convince a person of.
You'll feel great if you do good.
It sounds so, so like a bill of sale, you know, a bill of goods that you're trying to sell.
People don't know it.
Therefore, to summarize, a good case could be made for goodness in terms of being a happier human being.
People who devote their lives to this, as opposed to given moments, have a deep, deep sense of inner peace, a deep sense of satisfaction, and they have something that I will talk about at length, or not at length, but more lengthily later they can.
They will be able to look forward to dying and saying that they made a difference.
That, to me, and this is going to be next week, starts part two of this eight weeks, and it's going to be very heavy.
I hope you will be able to attend, because it is going to be about the pursuit of meaning, which is the the great indispensable element to happiness, but the ability to be able to say that I I know that if I died tomorrow, I know that I could say that I have done something.
And, in this regard, my final words for today and then I'll open up for questions if you have any.
There's a terrible terror.
It happened again on on my, on the, on the phone, on the, on my radio show.
There's a terrible tendency of a lot of people to think if they don't make a difference macro and they only do in an individual's life, it's not such a big deal folks, that the quicker you disabuse yourself of that thinking, the better you will be and the better the world will be.
Gorbachev is making a big difference macro.
The most of you don't have a chance to be the general secretary of the Communist Party OF THE Soviet Union during totalitarian times.
Okay, it is just off limits, Literally, literally, if the most wonderful American became President of the United States, even he or she would not have much of an impact.
Impacts are available overwhelmingly when there is major evil.
A major, powerful figure is there in a leadership and powerful position to confront it.
Otherwise, it is not possible.
Churchill is great because of Nazism.
Lincoln is great because of slavery.
Martin Luther King is great because of discrimination.
Greatness on the macro level occurs only when there is massive evil to conquer and you are in the position to do it.
It is open to about two people a century.
Some centuries had no openings.
And I hope, incidentally, that the next century has no openings.
I hope all major evils are done.
And in that case, no one will become this momentous macro achiever.
The rest of us will affect two, ten, maybe twenty, maybe ten thousand.
But the world has six billion.
People are stymied from doing good because they don't think that what they do will mount to a hill of beans.
It is one of the big obstacles to many people's doing good.
So I'll help one old lady in a nursing home.
Big deal.
It's the biggest deal in the world because to that lady, she is the most important thing on earth.
You can't save Romania.
You're not called upon to save Romania.
By the way, this was taught to me too.
Dear, dear friend who's a Roman Catholic priest, I've been bugging him for years to try to be a cardinal.
I've been, I did.
We know each other about six years.
For the first three years, I would aggravate him.
I'd go, come on, you're so bright.
You're so charismatic.
You're so wonderful.
Why the hell are you a parish priest or a high school principal?
You should be out there.
You should be an archbishop.
And he would look at me and say, you know, I don't want to be an archbishop.
I don't want to be a cardinal.
They don't get to meet anybody.
They get to sit behind huge desks in big chanceries and sign big papers and make big speeches.
I get to visit people in hospitals.
He's right.
That's what people have to learn.
That is this idea of if I'm not moving mountains to hell with hills is a horrible, horrible notion.
Mountains are movable under the rarest of circumstances and they just have to fall into your lap.
Had there been no Nazism, you wouldn't have ever heard of Winston Churchill.
Therefore, forget this notion.
You are not going to cure homelessness, poverty, AIDS tomorrow.
But if you visit somebody regularly, you are doing an immense amount.
And needless to say, if everybody did it, the world would be idyllic.
The world would be paradise.
Most people, you know, people raise issues about God and suffering.
Yet I have done this repeatedly over a decade.
I've asked audiences, raise your hand.
I'm not doing it again.
I'm just telling you their story.
Raise your hand, I have said, if the vast majority of your pain, there are two types of pain that we can suffer, man-made and natural, right?
There's no third type.
Raise your hand if the vast majority of the pain in your life has been induced by people.
And overwhelmingly, most people raise their hands.
Not by God, not by cancer, not by earthquakes, by people.
And the good in your life, excuse me, it's not from pipe smoking, it's allergies.
The good in your life has come from people too.
We can make life for others a joy or a horror.
That is in human hands.
So goodness, done even on the most micro level, is so immense in its ramifications for others' happiness and for yourselves that it cannot be understated, cannot be overstated.
Excuse me.
I'll end with this, and we won't have time for questions.
I'll end with this.
I asked on my first year that I did my show, Religion on the Line, I asked the priest minister rabbi, who are your heroes?
They named Moses, Jesus, St. Paul, Maimonides, etc., etc., which is fine, and these are heroic.
Raoul Wallenberg.
And they're great.
I mean, I'm not arguing with those choices.
When it came to my time, I answered the question too.
I had not planned to say this, but as I was listening to all their answers, I was starting to realize there's something missing.
And I said, finally, people who, my heroes are people who generally observe the law, lead a good life, raise decent children, go to work, and pay their taxes honestly.
They really are my heroes.
It is very hard to do that.
It is in some ways much easier to do a macro great thing than be faithful each day to your spouse, be a conscientious spouse, be a good parent, be a good friend to your friends, give a shoulder to a friend who has a tear.
That's tough stuff.
Nobody writes it up.
And in America, the great reward is notoriety.
To be known, this is nirvana to an American.
That's what the gun show was.
The purpose was to be known for making a fool of yourself.
The entire purpose was to be foolish.
Why?
Because it is much better to waste your life and be known than to lead a beautiful life and not be known.
That is what has happened to too many Americans, and it's trickled down to kids.
You know what kids say today what they want to be?
I wouldn't mind if they said rich, but they say rich and famous.
The famous bothers me much more than the rich.
Because most people who will attain fame will not be doing it because they have been a mother Teresa, but will be doing it because of something analogous more to the gong show.
That's not a happy development in our society.
Today to review, talked about enjoying life in the last part of that.
Pursuit of depth and the pursuit of goodness.
We begin the last four weeks with the chief criteria for becoming a happier human being in totally different directions.