Pictured above: Before his injury, Dennis Prager did a weekly Fireside Chat. Present at almost all 300 of these programs, was his faithful English bulldog Otto (2011-2023). Otto was also the hero of a series of PragerU books for children. Yet, Dennis said none of that fame ever went to his head, and Otto always remained the same humble, pleasant dog.
—————————–
(continued…)
Expectations Are Damaging
“Imagine that you discover a strange new lump on your body. You go to a doctor, who tells you that it looks suspicious and that you should have a biopsy. After waiting a week for the results, you learn that the lump is benign. That day will be one of the happiest days of your life. Why? Because on this day, you did not expect to be healthy. Am I therefore saying that we should not expect to be healthy? Yes. We can and should desire to be healthy and work at being healthy. But ideally, we should awaken every day and be as happy about our good health as if we had just received the wonderful news that a lump was diagnosed as benign.”
Expectations Undermine the Most Important Element in Happiness
“When expectations are unfulfilled, they cause gratuitous pain, and when they are fulfilled, they diminish gratitude, the most important element in happiness.”
“Yes, there is a ‘secret to happiness’ — and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy.”
“Because gratitude is the key to happiness, anything that undermines gratitude must undermine happiness. And nothing undermines gratitude as much as expectations.”
“While I can take it for granted that the sun will rise tomorrow, I cannot take for granted a healthful tomorrow; one day I will not wake up healthy, but the sun will surely rise on that day.”
“Optimism has two dictionary definitions. One is the more immature one: ‘A tendency to expect the best possible outcome. The other is ‘To dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation.’ This second definition of optimism is vitally necessary to happiness.”
On Regarding Oneself as a Victim
“You cannot be happy if your primary identity is that of a victim, even if you really are one.”
“People who have chosen to regard themselves as victims cannot allow themselves to enjoy life, because enjoying life would challenge their perception of themselves as victims.”
How this attitude has helped me.
There is no question about my being a victim. I cannot move my legs, and worst of all, I cannot move my arms. I envy paraplegics. I would give anything to be able to wheel myself around, use a keyboard, hug my wife, children, grandchildren, and friends. I have spent most of the last nearly two years trying to recover the ability to breathe without a ventilator and to regain my normal voice. I have lost 80 percent of my income while my expenses have increased significantly, as I need 24/7 nursing care, and for some reason, Medicare does not pay anything for home care for patients with spinal cord injuries.
Seeing Yourself as a Victim
Despite all that, I refuse to see myself as a victim.
One reason is that seeing myself as a victim would ensure anger and depression, negating any possibility of happiness. Another is the effect my seeing myself as a victim, with its concomitant anger and depression, would have on those who love me and, for that matter, all those who visit me.
Instead, I regard myself in many ways as quite lucky, without denying any of the objective facts of my condition.
Here is one example of that good fortune for which I am grateful: On virtually any given morning, while I showered upstairs, my wife was downstairs in the kitchen preparing my food for my radio show. Yet on that fateful morning, Sue was upstairs and actually saw me fall. She not only saved me from brain damage; she literally saved my life.
The surgeon on duty at the hospital to which the ambulance brought me initially recommended against the surgery needed to prevent further damage to my spinal cord from swelling. Instead, he said I should be given palliative care to make my final days as painless as possible. This doctor did not know of the next bit of good fortune on which I focus my gratitude: Upon hearing the news of my fall, Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, made an emergency call to Dr. Jared Ament, a friend of hers who happens to be a neurosurgeon. This doctor took a look at my MRI, determined the injury was survivable, and helped my wife advocate for the needed decompression surgery — lifesaving measure number two. These two episodes of good luck were followed by a succession of fortuitous events too numerous to mention here.
So, am I a victim or a particularly lucky man? Every doctor and RN who has seen me has marveled at the fact that I can breathe without a ventilator and speak as well as I can, given the high level of my injury.
God
And what is God’s role in all of this? Should He have prevented my fall? Did He ensure that Sue was almost miraculously present when I fell? As the Sovereign of the universe, did He, for reasons we cannot know, seek my fall? Or was He not responsible for any of it, and allowed it to happen?
The answers to these questions are unavailable to us humans in this lifetime. As for me, I have for many years said publicly that I do not expect God to protect me from calamity. I never thought that I was more worthy of saving than the six million Jews, or the 60 million Chinese. What I believe is that God is with me at this painful time in my life. And what I know is that God has intervened on behalf of the Jewish people.
The question for you is, will you be grateful or will you be ungrateful? Will you complain or will you create?
**************************
Job 1:21 — The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Psalm 34:18-19 — The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Psalm 119:71 — It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
**************************
O God in heaven, I thank you that you do not require me to comprehend you and your ways; for if that were required, I would be most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend you, the more incomprehensible you are. Therefore, I thank you that you require only faith, and I pray that you increase my faith in you. Amen.
— adapted from a prayer by Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
———————————–
If you have the time, the link below is an example of Dennis Prager’s wisdom as presented on one of PragerU’s five-minute videos. These broad, sweeping generalizations about Judeo-Christian values are explained more fully on other PragerU videos (see http://www.PragerU.com ).
https://www.prageru.com/videos/what-are-judeo-christian-values
_______________________
Related Posts
