I am looking out my window and wishing that I had a special unit of snow removal Little Soldiers this morning…
…but alas, all 100 of my Little Soldiers are multi-purpose and must handle all things, including snow.
Thinking in terms of Little Soldiers has been especially helpful to me over the past few months. It is a way to quantify available resources — or bandwidth — so that we do not overdraw our emotional bank account (how is that for mixing up metaphors?!).
None of us have unlimited Little Soldiers. We have exactly 100, and they have to do all the work of our lives. If we have extras, we can let them rest up and/or maybe send them to help someone who is struggling, but we cannot make more Little Soldiers and there is no Little Soldier store.
100. That is it.
Sparkle
What we can and should do is be intentional about how to use those 100 Little Soldiers, accurately assessing situations and then deciding how many Little Soldiers should be dispatched.
We do not want to send too few — Little Soldiers are prone to work to exhaustion, and will fall into crumpled, sobbing heaps if we ask too few to do too much.
We do not want to send too many either, as the extras — feeling useless and wanting something to do — tend to create drama, which is also not helpful.
Capella and Pozy Clarkia
I think women especially tend to underestimate how many Little Soldiers are needed in a particular situation, and we tend to overwork our troops as well. It is a bad combination. Trying to make 100 do the work of 150 never goes well for long.
As I look ahead to 2022, I do so with the understanding that my Little Soldiers are pretty darn busy these days making sure I do the essential things — like breath and stay upright.
But Hope is also an essential thing, and that means some of the Little Soldiers must be working on things that give me reasons to look forward.
And that is where — for me — Life, with Dogs comes in. I do not have a lot of available Little Soldiers but I recognize what is not optional — some of my Little Soldiers must be engaged with the dogs.
Sparkle!
Planning, hoping, dreaming, training, showing…