I'm sure you have heard it said before that happiness is a journey and not a destination.  I very much agree with that and it is commonly accepted as truth in most of society. (See Footnote on Journey.) Here is a variation of that common theme:

Democracy is a journey, not a destination, by which "little by little and day by day, we get closer to those ideals and to a society that is truly tolerant and diverse and just."(Source Secretary of State Rice)

 I have some more data to suggest to you about happiness and it relates very much to be to the Title of this Book, "Book of Truths."

This data is relatively revolutionary and could well change your life and the quality and quantity of happiness in your life.  The rule is very simple.  Unhappiness along the journey of life comes when you travel with someone on that journey but that someone has a different set of moral values than you do.  Happiness then comes from traveling on your journey through life with someone whose moral values you agree with.

The Truth which I am offering you is not a rigid set of moral rules but rather a set of areas where moral issues are important to the survival.  For instance one of the moral truths is that you should not use harmful drugs.  However this concept of happiness does not include any rigid list of what particular drugs are classified as harmful.  There could well be disagreement on this particular moral issue between two people one person saying that a particular drug is useful and necessary for his health and happiness while another says that particular drug is in fact harmful and dangerous.

This Truth shows a procedure by which you can examine your own moral codes one by one and figure out where exactly are your boundaries for each of these areas.

For instance society generally frowns on drug dealers and you could say that almost any moral code would include that it would be immoral to deal in drugs.

I can tell you however that two drug dealers who both feel that it is okay to deal in drugs can be happy together but neither one of them would be very happy if the other had an opinion about the moral issue that dealing drugs was  immoral.

Another amazing thing about this Truth is that you can discover why it is that you get sick or even have a serious disease.

You will get sick when and as someone close to you violates your moral code.

This rule is so universally true that virtually all illness disease and even accidents can be traced back to a relationship problem.

John and Mary are husband and wife.  John gambles while Mary thinks that gambling is immoral.  The one who suffers here is Mary because Mary gets sick or has health problems because her husband John violates Mary's moral code.

Here is even a stronger rule that applies universally.

When there is a family in turmoil, that is, the parents are fighting or arguing with one another, any child unlucky enough to be in that family is going to be sick.  The younger the child the more likely that child will be sick.

The opposite is also true. My incredible happiness, looking at the scene of me helping my family raise kim was because of the very strongly shared moral code amongst my family.

Not only every person in my family, but even every person in my village shared an important list of morals. Therefore my whole village was a happy place. When and if there were "spots of unhappiness," it would be found that there was some failure to behave in accordance with the otherwise-shared moral values.

Note this, also, morals is an issue of behavior, not belief. It is not enough that someone "thinks" that some bad behavior is "OK" but he must then "behave" in some way to reflect these thoughts. Also you need to apply some level of "handling" even if that is only to frown at the behavior of the other.

Finally, another truth, every person thrives on admiration and admiration is given by one person to another when the giver sees behavior that aligns with his own moral code.

Every member of my family admired my helping with kim -- my happiness was assured by their admiration.

An important lesson life here -- because I too have realized that when I "admire" my family members and students, they do better. I look for points of agreement and shared behavior then pour on the admiration.

Surely farming kim in my village was a very strongly shared behavior that led to improved survival (food) for our village. (The "City People" did not grow their own kim and had to work in "jobs" to earn "money" to come to our village to "buy" our kim.

Whenever you see a baby and it gets sick in the first year or so of life you can be sure that careful investigation would discover that the parents were fighting and/or the parents had strong disagreements on their moral code.

After you have read this Truth you may feel the need for further guidance on using it.  I hold myself out as a morals counselor to my students, family and friends.

This is not a religious service I offer because the Truth which I offer here is a commonsense guide to morals and not a religious set of rules.