Living Happiness

In an earlier post, I mentioned my recent re-discovery of My Little Notebook of Dreams ~ a small journal I began last summer recording my heart’s desires, my deepest wishes, concerning different areas of my life. What I had wanted at the time was to record these desires and then transform them into conscious intention which would then transform into actual manifestation.

Well, for various reasons, I did not entirely succeed at being as intent as I’d hoped. And even though some of the dreams remained in my heart, the journal itself found its way to my bookshelf where it was almost forgotten for a year.

Last week I took it down again and was amazed to discover how several of these heart’s desires had still managed to come true over the course of the year. This confirmed for me the strength and the power of our dreams, particularly when they are centered and in harmony with our innermost selves.

Yesterday I opened this journal again to read more intently my heart’s desires of a year ago and got another jolt when I read what I had written regarding the area of Home. I would like to share it with you:

As some of you know, the past few weeks have been very busy for me and my fiancé because we have found a new home. It is an amazing place: a lovely two-bedroom house with office, fireplace, and a garden filled with flowering trees.

How many of you have already guessed that everything in that dream I wrote above has come true? Everything. From the quiet neighbourhood to the abundance of flowers to the kitchen, the windows, the view, the sacred space of my own. All of it is there!

We speak often lately of this phenomenon. We call it The Secret or The Law of Attraction, and we read every day the accounts of other people who are manifesting these laws in their own lives (Nadia from HappyLotus shared her own personal story just recently). But how many of us believe it can happen for us?

I am reminded of an old movie, The Ten Commandments, where Rameses (played by Yul Brynner) proclaims: “So let it be written. So let it be done.”

Would love to hear from you,

I have an alter-ego. Her name is Tammy. She is a sassy, spirited, good-natured individual who says what she thinks and doesn’t pay any mind to whether people agree with her or not. She’s smart, funny, irreverent and the life of the party. She’s also a loud and proud Southern Girl.

Tammy grew up eating grits, making biscuits, putting peanuts in her Pepsi-Cola® bottle, and calling everybody “y’all.” She went to church every Sunday, and every Wednesday night, too. And she was a key player in the Youth Group. When she wasn’t at church, she was marching in the school marching band. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was stealing sweet necking sessions with her first real boyfriend in his brand-new GMC pickup truck, calling country radio stations to dedicate songs to him, and immersing herself in Earnhardt trivia.

Her parents were of good Southern stock, too. Plain, simple farming people or, in the case of her mom, fishing people on the Gulf Coast of Florida. On her dad’s side, she had a few distant cousins who all entertained her when she visited with horseback rides and three-wheeling (before three-wheelers were outlawed). On her mother’s side, she had cousins who had children who were older than her, and memories of visiting trailer parks with naked babies and chickens running around the yard. Old Milwaukee was bought by the case and cigarettes were rolled, not bought. Mom’s people went clamming and crabbing. They cursed like sailors.

The thing about Tammy is Tammy is also me. But she is the side of me that doesn’t come out too often. It’s a shame, because I really like Tammy. But I haven’t figured out how to introduce Tammy to Greece … or vice versa. Don’t even really know if I want to.

Tammy is a part of me that hasn’t been called on much during the last 17 years of my life. Loveable she is, but sometimes Tammy’s scope is too limited, her thinking too restrained, and so we go our separate ways. Where Tammy wants to play Tim McGraw, other parts of me fight for Miles Davis. Where Tammy would be happy with the white picket fence and the farmhouse in the country, other parts of me prefer to see the world, to have the house with the lemon tree on the Cretan hillside. Where Tammy sees black and white, I see many shades of grey. Where Tammy sees peace and quiet, I see stagnation.

I read an interesting article lately about this Tammy phenomenon. And apparently I’m not the only one with alter-egos running around inside of me. Most of us it seems have different selves and self-concepts that emerge in our lives every day. Who we “really are,” however, is the result of which of these we tend to let out to play the most often. And over time, this becomes more fixed. We define for ourselves a more certain selfhood. We do it through the conscious choices we make.

The reason I bring this up today is because when people start talking about happiness, a question that usually arises is: Who are you? The assumption being that when we know ourselves, we can listen to ourselves and make choices in accordance with our needs and desires–choices that can potentially make us quite happy. But … if we have all these multiple selves (if anyone else is like me and has a Tammy) how does one answer this question: Who are you? And whom do you listen to for the answer?

I couldn’t help but wonder this week: How would Tammy have answered those interview questions? It’s hard to say, but just imagining her answers gave me a laugh … and got me thinking.

What do you think? How do you answer the question “Who are you?”

Do your choices every day honor the “you” that you truly want yourself to be?

Have you created a “you” you’re happy with?

Just some food for thought. Let me know.
Until then …