My Great Grandfather once told me the secret to happiness, which I am going to share with you today.  First I am going to tell you a little bit about him.  His name was Guy Newton and he grew up without the knowledge of the automobile, and lived into a time when men were racing to plant their flag on the moon.  He was a simple farmer who married the woman of his dreams.  He liked to chew tobacco, not the new fangled dip, but the kind you cut pieces off with a knife and chewed on. 

He had a farm in Sacramento, California.  He told me once that he saw an add in the paper proclaiming this new deice that would kill every fly on his ranch.  Eager to be rid of the pesky horse flies that plagued his farm, he quickly sent the required money to purchase the device.  What arrived was two pieces of wood and instructions which read: “Place fly on one board, slam the other board on top.”  This was the type of story he told me, simple, and with a moral.  He would never explain it to me, if I didn’t get it, then I didn’t need to understand it.

He once asked me if I knew how to keep from getting hungry.  His response was to eat.  He then followed this bit of wisdom with “Do you know how to keep from getting tired?”  And so it went for a few moments.  He would ask a question and then answer it with a simple truth.  In this fashion he formed a thought process in my mind.  When confronted with a problem, discover the most simple solution, which is not necessarily the easiest to accomplish.  By applying this simple wisdom I have become a excellent problem solver, and I employ this tactic on a daily basis.

One day when I was about eight years old he came to me asked me if I was happy.  I responded that I was happy, to which he responded that of course I was.  He told me why I was happy though.  I had a family that loved me, I had no need to worry about where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep that night.  At the time it meant little to me, of course I had those things, I was a kid.  He then went on to tell me that these were necessary for a child to be happy, but for an adult this changed dramatically.