The only news we currently have about Dennis Prager is that he had a fall in the shower, suffered an extremely serious back injury, and has had surgery for the injury. I join the millions who wish him a swift, pain-free, and complete recovery. I’m also probably one of the millions whose life Dennis Prager made better.

I grew up in a depressed home. My parents had suffered through terrible childhoods and young adulthoods, marred by poverty, dislocation, broken homes, worldwide Depression, and wars—not one, but two (WWII and the Israeli War of Independence). They were capable of great joy, and raised us with love and in a secure, moral environment, but there was always an undercurrent of anger and sadness in my house.

I carried that with me growing up because it was my normal. Add in my own feelings of inferiority (I went to a nerdy academic high school and had the distinction of being a nerd among nerds), and a career I hated (I was never meant to be a litigator), and I was not a particularly happy adult. Having children made it worse because I had terrible pregnancies, serious post-partum depression, and chronic sleep deprivation.

My life could have been very, very dark. However, two wonderful things came my way.

Image: YouTube screen grab (cropped and edited for clarity).

The first was the person who, when I was complaining about my very young children’s sheer awfulness, asked me, “Do you ever catch them being good?” When I replied that this was impossible, he explained that children desperately want their parents’ attention. If they get that attention by being naughty, they will be naughty. If you catch them being good (actually good, not made-up stuff), they will be good.

And so, it was. It turned out that they were good all the time. I just never noticed or commented on it. Once I started catching them being good, subject to the normal naughtiness of all children and teens, they proved to be wonderful people. They’re adults now, and I have a lovely relationship with them. I feel incredibly blessed.

Indeed, the whole “catch them being good” was so awe-inspiring that I do it with everyone. I like to think people are happier after contact with me—or at least not sadder. I know I’m happier because I’m surrounded by all these great people wherever I go. After all, I see what I want to see. To the extent I can still be venomous, I reserve it for public figures who are doing genuinely bad things to make America and the world less happy, prosperous, and safe. They’re not being good and they deserve to be called out.

The other wonderful thing that came my way was the Dennis Prager show. When I realized I was a conservative, not a Democrat, I started listening to KSFO-AM, the lone conservative radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dennis Prager’s show used to be on the station, so I started listening whenever I was alone in the car between carpools.

What was immediately obvious was Prager’s ferocious intelligence and his high-level logical abilities. I was also impressed by his strong moral compass. And in a screaming world, this was a man who invariably treated his guests—and in those days, non-conservatives were often his guests—with exquisite civility.

As Prager so often said, “I prefer clarity to agreement.” Under that rubric, he’d ensure he understood his guests’ points. More than once, when he’d gently pushed a guest to clarify a muddy point, the guest would discover that Prager’s facts and logic were correct.

Every Friday, Prager would have his happiness hour. As he develops at length in his book, Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual (which I’ve given to more people than I can count), humans are unique in that, absent extraordinary circumstances (e.g., Auschwitz), they can decide to be happy. Other animals are situationally happy but lack the cognitive ability to think themselves happy. To Prager, this is a God-given gift, and we have an obligation to use it.

In his book and on his show, week after week, Prager would drive home the point that happiness (true happiness, not through substances or abuse) is a moral obligation. That was a rather stunning concept to me. Happiness isn’t a “me, me, me” thing; it is a duty, as well as a pleasure.

And just as importantly, we do not have an obligation to make others happy, although it’s nice if we can. Morally, we shouldn’t make them unhappy, but each person has his own happiness responsibility. That lifted from me the huge burden of dealing with my aging, depressed mother. I still loved her and cared for her, but I no longer had the tremendous guilt of failing to make her happy...nor could she blackmail me into dancing attendance whenever she said that I was the only thing that could make her happy.  

Between the twin pillars of “catch them being good” and “happiness is a serious problem,” my life improved immeasurably. I became and still am—every single day—a happy person surrounded by good people.

Discovering Dennis Prager was one of the best things that ever happened to me, so I find it very distressing that he is suffering so much now. I hope and pray that he finds his way back to health and happiness, both for his own sake and for the benefit of everyone he’s touched with his wisdom, morality, logic, and profound approach to happiness.