Dennis Prager

I recently attended a talk on happiness by the well-known radio show host, Dennis Prager. I found Dennis Prager to be very insightful, as well as funny. Some of the things he said were very thought provoking, and I now realize that he was right: happiness is a moral obligation.

Prager started by introducing himself and explaining how he started to talk on happiness. When someone wanted him to do a talk on something light, they suggested happiness. His first thought was, happiness is a very serious subject! He also did not think that it was as important as other subjects, such as morality. However, when he did speak on the subject, everybody loved it. It was broadcast on New York Radio, and became an article in several magazines. Eventually, Dennis Prager did some workshops on happiness, and was asked to write a book on the subject. However, he did not feel ready to write a book, because he still did not feel that happiness was a very significant subject. It was only ten years later that he finally realized a very important truth: we are morally obligated to be happy. One of the reasons why is because we owe it to God. Just like a parent is hurt by an unhappy child, God is hurt by our unhappiness. The other reason is because we owe it to other people. Unhappiness spreads easily, much better than happiness does, so we should try to act happy. People who look happy are generally thought better of than people who look unhappy. Also, Prager explained, acting happier makes one happier. This has been proven to work in many other cases- people who act kinder, become kinder. People who act religious, become religious. In Prager's words, "fake it till you make it." If people always acted like they were feeling, the world would be a terrible place. Thus, it is our duty to act happy even if we're unhappy, for the benefit of others and ourselves. We often look around and wonder why everyone else has such a better life than our own. What we do not realize is that the happy people we know have probably not suffered any less than us; they just know how to be happy despite being dissatisfied. Humans are built to be dissatisfied, and there are only two ways to deal with our dissatisfaction. The first way, which is extremely difficult, is to learn to be satisfied with what we have. The second, better way is to say that it is fine to be dissatisfied as long as we do not allow it to make us unhappy. Prager calls this the Missing Tile Syndrome. If we have a tile ceiling with one missing tile, that spot is all that we tend to see. In the same way, if there is one thing in our life that we are dissatisfied with, that is all we see. To be happy, we just need to learn to look at the rest of the ceiling. As Lincoln said, "we are as happy as we decide to be."

I found this talk extremely insightful. I have always known that it is good to be happy, but I had never thought of it as a moral obligation before. I have always known that acting happy makes you happier, just as with any other area of life, but I had never truly thought about what that means before. I found the missing tile analogy to be very useful in understanding how to be happy despite disappointments in life. All in all, I truly enjoyed listening to Dennis Prager's talk. It was both funny and useful, and I hope that it will help those who hear it to be happy throughout their lives.