Dennis Prager emphasized the importance of gratitude in his first in-person public appearance since an accident that effectively paralyzed him.
“Let me just tell you right now,” Prager said Oct. 15 in Miami, “I am not disappointed in God.”
Prager delivered an hourlong speech on gratitude and suffering, reflecting on the aftermath of his fall on Nov. 12, 2024. Prager said he slipped while exiting the shower in his home and hit his head, rendering him quadriplegic from the shoulders down.
His understanding of happiness helped him cope with the fallout, he said.
“It is a semi-miracle that I am breathing without a ventilator and that I am speaking to you,” Prager said. “None of this was expected.”
From the day of his accident, Prager said he knew he had three choices: death, depression, or perseverance.
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“I love life, I don’t want to die,” Prager asserted. “I love life as much as I have ever loved life—and I don’t want to leave my loved ones.”
“As for depression, that is one of the few things I fear,” Prager continued. “I’ve never been depressed, thank God. I’ve been sad, otherwise I wouldn’t be human, but I don’t want to be depressed. So, I have no choice. I have to persevere.”
Prager read excerpts from his 1998 book “Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual,” in which he espoused a moral philosophy that promoted gratitude as the root of happiness.
“Our reaction is determined by our attitudes and perspective, or more precisely, by our philosophy of life,” Prager said. “Without a philosophy of life—and now I’ll add suffering—we do not know how to react to what life deals us.”
“Only when it hits you do you start thinking things through and dealing with them,” Prager commented. “Then it’s late, it’s too late.”
He proposed instead that “all happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy.”
Prager said he is no more worthy to be spared from suffering than the victims of evils such as the Holocaust or of countless natural disasters.
He continued from his book: “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 for granted the sun will rise tomorrow. I cannot take for granted a healthful tomorrow.”
He said he counts himself lucky in some ways, for his wife, the medical staff who attended to him after his fall, and the people around him.
“That is one thing: I have not allowed myself to think of myself as a victim,” Prager said, “and I promise you, I do not deny any of the awful aspects of what has happened to me. But my identity is Dennis, not victim.”
He made a promise to the audience: “This is the first time I’m giving a public talk in person, but this I promise you, it will not be the last.”
“I intend to podcast, broadcast, simulcast, every-cast that there is,” he joked. “I have a lot to say.”
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