"C'mon Get Happy"

I am starting this post now, at 11:48 - when will it end?  Some time tonight/this morning.  I'm waxing nostalgic in several ways. The good old days, not sure when they were, but I miss them.

About a month ago I gave a scholar in residence talk about happiness.  Beforehand I searched my apartment for Dennis Prager's Happiness Is A Serious Problem. I couldn't find it, so I referenced it from memory and also used an online article by Prager about how happiness is a moral obligation on an individual and global scale. I also used two books by Rabbi Abraham Twerski - one that he wrote for Artscroll/Mesorah called Simcha - It's Not Just Happiness, and another that he did for Jewish Lights called Happiness and the Human Spirit. It went pretty well - was a difficult gig because I was booked as guest speaker and there was also a shloshim siyum for someone from the shul who'd passed away.  I think it went well. The family seemed pleased.  A friend of mine, who is a long time mechanech, told me that Prager regularly addresses happiness on his radio show and emphasizes his belief that happiness is a moral obligation. I found the book, and read some of it over Shabbos (friends of mine and their children were once staying overt at my place and one of the kids tried to count my books and gave up when she got to 2000).  It was clearly min hashamayim  that I didn't find it before the talk because I think using more from this book wouldn't have been as good a fit as the content I went with.

Prager writes, "There are some clear rules to happiness. One is that you cannot be happy if your primary identity is that of a victim, even if you really are one."  He states several reasons why victim-hood precludes happiness. Here's his explanation - adapted by me - for why people who identify themselves as victims can't be happy. People who see themselves as victims don't take control of their lives because they don't see it as an option. They feel that life happens to them not by them.  So they're not going to do what they need to to make themselves happy.  Part of victim-hood is to feel that life is unfair and to enjoy being an unhappy and "picked on" soul. Another part of the victim syndrome is to be perpetually angry "and an angry disposition makes happiness impossible." Enjoying life and being happy will mean letting go of the choice to view oneself as a victim and people who are committed to feeling victimized are in that place because they gain something from it (or think they do) that they don't want to let go of.