Episode 3: Happiness is a Moral Obligation | Master's Program | PragerU

Okay, Dad. Are you happy? Am I happy? I am. You can be. Everybody thinks of happiness as an emotion. I feel happy. I don't feel happy. Well, I'm here to tell you that how you feel is significant to you and to your loved ones, perhaps, and certainly to your therapist. But to the rest of the world, it's how you act that matters much more than how you feel. Welcome back. I'm Dennis Prager. My subject today is happiness is a moral obligation. Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, suffered a tremendous amount. He lost two of his four children while he was living. His country was at war with one another. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Americans died killing each other. And yet it was Lincoln who said, people are as happy as they decide to be. And that's my argument here. You should make the decision to be happy, or at least to act happy, even if you're not. Because we owe it to everyone in our life to be happy. When I meet a person with a happy disposition, and I meet thousands upon thousands of people a year, when I meet someone who has a happy disposition, I immediately think well of them. I think well of them as I would if I met a kind person or an honest person. That's how important having a happy disposition is, and everybody knows it. Because everybody wants to be around people who have happy dispositions. So I've made an interesting observation because I have talked to so many couples over decades. And here is what I have concluded. Most marriages are a moody married to a non-moody. On occasion two non-moody's marry, but I have never once heard of or met a moody married to a moody. Which has led me to the following conclusion. The moody may be miserable, but they're not stupid. They never marry one of their own. Moody's don't like moody's. The unhappy don't want to be among unhappy people. That's the irony of all of this. It's okay for them to be moody, but they don't want you to be moody. It is a very tough childhood to have an unhappy parent. It is a very difficult time as a parent to have an unhappy child. And it is a very troubled marriage to have an unhappy spouse. Just ask people who have lived with one in the family and you will understand why it is a moral obligation to be happy. Now why do people brush their teeth as often as they do or even gargle with mouthwash? Why? So as not to inflict their bad breath on others. I want you to regard bad moods the same way you regard bad breath. You should brush them away. It's as simple as that. Why is bad breath bad, but bad mood not? There's no answer to that question. We owe it to everybody in our life. Our spouse, our children, our siblings, our co-workers, our fellow students, the people that we share an apartment with, anyone in our life, we owe it to them to be as happy as possible. Nobody likes to live with unhappy people. People act better when they are happy. Every one of you watching this knows that. That when you feel happy, you act more kindly toward other people. It's just the way it is. When you're in a good mood, you're more charitable, you're more kind, you're more generous, you're more courteous. It's a given. It's tough to be nice when you're in a bad mood. If you really do follow what was said thus far, you will be a better human being in every way. You will be a joy to be with. You will bring light into whatever room you walk into. You will walk with your head higher. You will have achieved this great achievement of happiness despite whatever pain you have had or do have in your life. That is a great achievement. So there's a moral obligation to be happy in so far as how it affects your own behavior. You're just a nicer human being, a finer human being when you are happy. So there you go. You need to act happy even if you don't feel it. I want you to realize how much our happiness affects the way we treat other people. The happy make the world better and the unhappy make it worse. When you think of the worst people in history, do you think of happy people? If you think of the Nazis, do you think of happy Nazis? Is that the first adjective that comes to your mind? Of course not. Happy people don't become Nazis. Happy people don't become communists, don't become fascists, don't become racists. Happy people are way better for humanity than the unhappy and the moody and the ungrateful. And by the way, the mother of happiness is gratitude. You cannot be happy if you're not grateful. If you do want to be happy, and this is the point of my whole talk here, is that you should want to be happy, be grateful. Gratitude is the mother of the two most important things in life, goodness and happiness. You owe it to God, your religion, or both, to at least act happy. I once asked a deeply religious man if he considered himself a truly religious, pious person. This was a very interesting thing. I don't even know what prompted me to ask him, but he came across as a very sincerely and deeply religious person. So he responded that while he aspired to be a happy person, I'm reading, I want to read exactly what he said, he felt that he fell short in two areas. One of those areas, he said, was his not being a happy enough person to be considered truly pious, truly religious. And that awakened me to something. For those of you who are religious, I'd like to tell you something. The most effective argument for atheism is not any of the ones given by atheists. The most effective argument for atheism is an unhappy religious person. If you're religious and unhappy, I'll tell you what it says about your religion, it doesn't work. A miserable religious person is a walking advertisement for atheism. So I would actually say to the chronically miserable religious person, listen, either get happy or at least act happier, or maybe stop acting religious. Because you're really doing God no favors by walking around as supposedly a God-centered person and unhappy. After all, I am a religious person and I got to tell you, I believe that God wants us to be happy. That's right. Why wouldn't he? When religious people poo-poo the argument that we should pursue happiness, like, where'd you get that from? You mean he made us to be unhappy? They actually equate religiosity with a certain degree of misery in life. Like God made you to be somewhat miserable, but that's not true. A lot of religious people, if I asked them, why did God make human beings? Do you know what the most common answer I get is to glorify God? Well, let me tell you something. If you believe that you don't glorify God, if you're religious and miserable, it's pretty powerful to be happy. And it's pretty powerful to be unhappy. Either way, it reflects powerfully on your religion. There is a phrase in the 12-step community, fake it till you make it. It's brilliant. If you don't feel happy, fake it. Act happy even if you don't feel it. And I don't mean walking around giggling, jumping up and down ecstatic. I think you understand what I mean. At least not acting unhappy. How you act is how you feel. But because we live in a very foolish age, the age of feelings, we have it backwards. Act the way you feel instead of feel as a result of the way you act. We have it completely backwards. People act on their feelings. What they should do is act and then have their feelings shaped by their actions. They have done studies where simply people smiling more, not even acting happy in any other way, has affected their own happiness. So I have been doing radio for 40 years. And for half of that time, a little more than half of that time, one of my hours each week has been called the happiness hour. It is the happiness hour because I think it's worth exploring. Has this past year affected your happiness? When you are unhappy, you can blame others, you can blame life, or you can blame yourself. So I, like every living person, went through difficult times. In my case, it was divorce with a child. It was a very painful period. And you know what? Just doing the happiness hour during the worst time of my life made me a happier human being. Having to do my radio show every single day, despite how I personally felt, was a major factor in my ability to cope with what I was going through and to be happier. How you act is everything. If you act miserable, you'll be miserable. If you act happy, you will be happier. That's just the way it works. We are the product of our behavior. Instead of thinking you are the product of your feelings, you must think you are the product of your behavior. It's true about everything in life. Act it. Or, as the 12-steppers would say, fake it till you make it. In the American Declaration of Independence, a brilliant document speaks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The founders of the United States, who I consider to have been giants in wisdom, these people understood you should pursue happiness. That's what Lincoln said, we are as happy as we decide to be. So how do you pursue it? Well, you begin pursuing it by becoming grateful. You pursue it by acting happy. And you pursue it by doing the things that bring happiness, not necessarily pleasure. Much of life's happiness comes from things that are not all that pleasurable. It may not be all that pleasurable every day to raise a child. It just isn't. In the best of cases, it's a challenge. But, generally speaking, family is a source of happiness for vast numbers of people. Here's another example. You can't be happy if you don't engage in self-control. Self-discipline. Self-control. People mistake pleasure for happiness. There's no pleasure in self-control. There is more pleasure in eating cheesecake than in not eating cheesecake. But there is more happiness available to you if you don't eat cheesecake. That is the way life works. That is why you should know how to pursue happiness, just as you would have to know how to pursue learning a foreign language or learning a musical instrument. Hard work, religion, marriage, family, self-discipline. Those are roots to pursuing happiness. Now, finally, let me deal with some objections to what I have said to you. Objection number one. It's inauthentic. I get this all the time, especially when I talk about happiness to kids. It's ghouls. Hey, it's not authentic. You're not being your real self if you act happy and you don't feel it. So, how's this? You know what's authentic? Back to my old example. Body odor, that's authentic. Deodorant is inauthentic. Soap is inauthentic. It's still the old-fashioned use of soap, hot water, and plenty of elbow grease. Toothpaste is inauthentic. So, let me ask you, what's better? Your authentic odor or deodorant odor? Which do you think is a better idea? This notion of authentic, what does it mean if people acted authentic? You know how many bad things they would do? We're not just filled with great and noble desires in life. I don't know what this authenticity thing is about. Now, you don't want people who are fakers in a bad sense that they act noble, but they're really ignoble or whatever. But the authenticity argument doesn't work. And just remember how inauthentic deodorant is, and you'll get my point. Number two, what about the clinically depressed? Dennis, are you telling them to act happy? They're clinically depressed. They have neurological problems. They have physiological issues. So, I have no answer to that. If you are literally incapable of acting happy because of physiological blocks, my heart goes out to you. If it's a medical issue, then you may well need medication. I fully acknowledge that. I am addressing those, the great majority of people, for whom that is not the issue. Nothing can address every single situation in life. There is no such thing. If you tell people not to speed, and yet somebody in their car has a heart attack, clearly they should speed to a hospital. You're talking in any generalizable principle. You're talking about the great bulk of mankind. You're not talking about the outlier. So, yes, there are people who are physiologically perhaps incapable of even getting out of bed. My heart truly breaks for these people. But for the vast majority of people for whom that is not the case, everything I said is valid and accurate. You should act as happy as possible. Number three, there is the objection of, well, the happy, they have an easier life than those of us who are unhappy. So, of course, it's easy for them to be happy. But what about us who have had really rough lives? So, let me tell you something. In my life, and I have led a long life and a life interacting with very many people, I have found virtually no correlation between the amount of pain people have had in their lives and their disposition. I have known people who have had the greatest pain of all perhaps, the death of a child, and who if you met them, you would think you were in the company of a person without a care in the world. They have figured out a way to still embrace life, still pursue happiness, still have a happy disposition. And I have met people who have had virtually no serious trauma, virtually no serious problems in life. And they have been miserable. A woman called me up one happiness hour. She said, Dennis, you're going to like this one. I am the child of Holocaust survivors. My parents are Jews from Europe who lost everything. Their spouses, their children, their parents were all murdered by the Nazis. My husband was born in America and lost no one. Guess which one of us is the miserable one? Him. That woman had a very big impact on me. There's a perfect example. I knew people whose parents went through the Holocaust. It was a very difficult, very difficult upbringing. And yet this woman was the happy one and the husband born in America, not a worry in the world compared to her. And he was the miserable one. So this argument, oh, well, I've had it rough. So I am excused from the moral obligation of being happy doesn't work. So the question really arises, why are there people who act moody and unhappy? And I have wrestled with this. A lot of people have called me and told me over the years that there are people who like being unhappy. And I got to tell you that that's that sounds like telling me there are people who like having fever. Why would you like to be unhappy? I don't have a full answer to that. The answers that people have given me include, well, the unhappy, you know, the greasy wheel gets the oil. The unhappy seem to get more attention and they love the attention. If you have four children in a house and one is consistently moody, the chances are the parents will give more attention, pay more attention to the child who is moody. And they may therefore grow up thinking, oh, this is a way to get loving attention. Just act miserable. And I think that that is part of what people think, whether consciously or not. That's why it may not be a good idea if you're a parent to give the unhappy kid, the moody kid, more attention than the others. Maybe you shouldn't. Of course, it's worth diagnosing what the source of this unhappiness is, but you still have to teach them, listen, I hear you. I understand you're unhappy. I'm sorry about that. But you cannot inflict your bad mood on the rest of the family. You have to make that clear as soon as possible. I remember with my kids, I didn't have that issue, but I had a different one, and that is your kid saying to you, I'm bored. I had, I must admit a really good response. You're not bored. You're boring. Guess what? That was the only time in their lives that either of my two sons said that he was bored. I had no patience. You're bored? No, you're boring. Figure out a way to make your life interesting. I am not going to make your life interesting. I am not going to make you happy, which is another big rule of life. No one other than you can make you happy. That's really important. A lot of people think, oh, they'll marry someone who will make them happy. By the way, that is why the non-moody often marry the moody. They think that they have the power to make that person happy. You don't. You cannot make another person happy. You can make another person miserable, but you cannot make another person happy. You make you happy. I wrote a book on happiness, which I'm not trying to sell you, I promise, but in it, I give example after example of the issues that people confront, like the gratitude issue. You can't be happy if you're not grateful. You won't want to read such a book if you don't understand you are the answer to your unhappiness. No one else is, including your spouse. That is too big a burden, and it's one that they cannot meet in any event. Your husband cannot make you happy, and your wife cannot make you happy. By the way, your children cannot make you happy either. Don't look to your children to make you happy. That's a very common problem in parenting. A lot of people think, oh, my kids will bring me happiness. They become successful or rich, or I don't know, whatever you value, but it's not true. They cannot make you happy. Here's another great insight from a caller to my radio show. I addressed the issue, can you be happier than your least happy child? Because many people believe you cannot be happier than your least happy child. That is like a cliche of parenthood. I completely object to that idea. I believe that you cannot allow your child to hold your happiness hostage. So a woman called my show, and she said, Dennis, I could not agree with you more. Here is what I resolved with regard to my adult daughter in her 30s who has always been miserable. One day, I realized the following. I didn't break her. I can't fix her. And I said to that woman, I want you to know, you have no idea and I have no idea how many lives you have just helped. And I remember my parents, God bless them, may they rest in peace. My parents were models of individual happiness. My mother died at 89, my dad at 96. They were married 69 years, they were together 72. They were crazy about each other. Till the last day my mother was on earth. My father was shattered by her death as it happens. But I remember thinking until my mother's death, I am so lucky that my parents don't look to me or my brother to make them happy. They were just happy. I saw with other adult children, the burden that they had to try to figure out how to make their parent or parents happy. I never had that. I was very, very lucky. They were very happy with themselves. So I didn't have this terrible burden of trying to figure out how do I make an unhappy parent happy. And they didn't have this burden of how to make their child happy. I was happy in my life. Yes, that's why this is titled happiness is a moral obligation. If everybody smiled, if everybody acted happier, if everybody pursued happiness, the world would be a much kinder and more wonderful place. If we took the responsibility on ourselves of trying to be a joy in others' lives, what a better world it would be. You know, when I meet young couples who were thinking of getting married, I never ask them, are you in love? I assume they're in love. I never ask it. I ask a more important question. Do you enjoy each other? That's a big one. There are a lot of people who love somebody, but they don't enjoy them. A lot of parents love their kids, but they don't like them. Like and enjoy are in some ways more important even than love for a lasting, happy world. That's what you should be working on. Being a joy in others' lives. That's the root to a beautiful life. When you know all of this, you will lead a happier life. Happiness is a moral obligation. It's an achievement, and you should look at it that way.