Living Happiness

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 …

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I kept the commandments, of which there were many. Not just the 10 main ones we all know of, but a whole bunch of other ones, too, including:

« Thou shalt not beg off a party just to stay home and read a book — even if it is more fun than three hours of small talk with people you don’t even like.

« Thou shalt not not go to the gym, or your ass will pay for it later.

« Thou shalt not say what you really think but, instead, what will get you in the least amount of trouble.

« Thou shalt do your best in everything because to do less than that is unthinkable, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And on and on.

I grew up on a strict diet of Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Nots, primarily owing to the fact that I grew up in a strict religious home of both the evangelical and pentecostal persuasion. Guilt was, of course, the side-dish that came with everything.

The Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not meal on which I frequently dined did not limit itself to the Basic 10–first and foremost of the food groups. It also expanded outward into other codes of conduct: job, dress, dating, boys, socializing, dealing with your elders, dealing with yourself, housekeeping, etc. I walked around most of the time with a list of “Have To’s” in my head: I have to do this, I must do that, I can’t not do that. Needless to say, I also walked around most of the time miserable. Somewhere I was always forgetting a rule. Or blatantly ignoring it and then suffering the pangs of “Oh, no! What will happen now?” thoughts. It was all very healthy, I assure you.

Fortunately for me, one day I met someone who had the gall to say to me, “No, you don’t have to!”

“What?! Me not have to do something?!” I answered back, “What do you mean?”

The person galling me was my therapist, and what she went on to say made a lot of sense. Very few of us have to do all of the things that we say we have to do. Are there things that it’s a good idea to do? Yes. Are there things that it’s better for us to do than others? Yes. Are there things that might produce more desirable outcomes than others? Yes. But are these things that we have to do? No.

This got me thinking. And I realized that, when I got right down to it, there were very few things in my life that really had to be done. Of these were essentially the ones that would keep me alive:

« Eat

« Drink water

« Sleep

The rest was all fluff, really. And even the eating, drinking water, and sleeping tasks were things I could choose not to do. At great detriment to myself, of course, but I could in fact choose not to do them.

And this was when I had my epiphany. Most of these “commandment” lives we lead deprive of us of two things:

1. Our sense of free will

2. Our sense of ourselves

When we are given a list of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots, life is easier. More miserable maybe, but easier. It takes the guesswork out of decision making: “What is it you’re asking me to do? Oh, yes. That’s right. That’s on my Thou Shalt list. Sure, yep, I can go along with that.”

It also deadens us to knowing what we really want. The question, “What do I want to do?” has no place in the lexicon of Commandment-ville. It’s not about what I want to do, it’s about what I have to do, whether I like it or not. But … who says?

And this is where we get down to brass tacks. After my conversation with my therapist (actually, after many conversations with my therapist) and more mulling over my epiphany, I realized that there’s nothing innately “wrong” with these commandments themselves as long as the conclusions they present are conclusions I myself can reach in my own life. That is to say, if I begin to question my drive to do or not to do something and can come to my own understanding that, “Yes, Chania Girl, eating is in your best interest today,” then by all means I embrace it. But the point is, I know why I am embracing whatever it is I’m embracing. And … I don’t make it a commandment. I look at it instead as taking some good advice.

A lot of my decisions used to be based on guilt and the “have to” world of Commandment-ville. These decisions were, therefore, based primarily in fear–fear of what would happen if I did or didn’t do this or that.

When I had my epiphany, I realized that there was a better place to operate from–a place of love.

Now when I am confronted with decisions and must contemplate what route to take, I ask myself: “What do I really want to do?” If the answer is hard for me to reach, I rephrase the question: “What would I most regret not doing?” I usually find that I can then make a clear decision, based in love. And no guilt or fear is involved at all.

I am not saying these things to disparage “the rules” we live by. By I do believe that what is important is not the rules themselves but the spirit behind them. Sadly, most of us spend our lives obeying (or disobeying) rules with no thought as to why, and living lives propelled by fear and anxiety rather than love, forgiveness, and acceptance.

This is why you will never find on my page a 10 Commandments For Loving Yourself or a 15 Rules to Live By To Create a Happier You.

Your journey is uniquely yours. It is a journey of honoring yourself and making choices that benefit you. It is a journey that can be made in love. If you choose for it to be.

Om shanti.

Namaste.