Dames Know Happiness is an Inside Job

One of the great things about following the Tao of Dame ™ is the jettisoning of old “strategies” and embracing a sort of self-contained wholeness in their place. The dame has a sort of self-reliance that doesn’t exclude other people, but doesn’t depend upon them either. A dame has the air of someone who has her needs met. She either meets them herself, knows how to get them met, or has an abiding faith that they will be met in good time. There’s no desperation, no neediness.

Sure, the strategies for getting needs met sometimes work, but at what price? When they do work, they steal a little part of you. Every action, every verbalization, every feeling that says “I NEED you/that/him/those” chips away at wholeness. And for every time these default behaviors work, there are a dozen times when they don't. the well-known irony is that the more you convey you need something/someone, the less likely you are to get it. Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction, or you just have the common sense to know that desperation is the least attractive perfume, emitting lack just perpetuates lackness.

In my own life, I’ve needed things and people badly. Or so I thought. But I came to realize that what I really needed were the feelings those people/things/experiences conferred. And since each one of us is our own feelings manufacturing machine, I discovered those feelings are available to me at anytime. I can choose to feel a certain way, or be a certain way, without words or trappings of approbation. Damn, it took me over 3 decades, but I finally figured out what that Dorothy Gale dame learned in a day or two back in Oz. I can be as brave, smart, loved and happy as I decide to be. Happiness is indeed an inside job.