March 22, 2025

Greetings Resilient Friends,

Have you ever looked back over your last year and said…Geez, I’m glad that’s over! That’s how I felt about my last year from March to March. It felt like one big difficult thing after another to deal with. And my persistence/patience balance was way out of wack…persistence on steroids and chocolate… patience without water, withering in the closet;)

My little dog was my trusty side kick through that crazy year.

Many of you know I have a rescue dog, Maggie May, named after the Rod Stuart song. I adopted her just before my year of chaos started. Good thing, otherwise, I probably would not have adopted. She came from Texas. As a stray, she was pulled out of a kill shelter by a nonprofit that thought they could find her a home.

I met Maggie on a zoom call and adopted her over the phone. A couple weeks later a big old school bus full of dogs from Texas pulled up at my local Petco. Can you imagine that road trip from Texas? Thirty dogs in an old school bus ;). I wonder what people thought passing them on the highways. The driver was the only human on the bus, and he even drove with one of the dogs on his lap. And can you imagine what was involved at the rest stops? Luckily, there were two other volunteers that followed in a car, to help with the traveling pups.

Resilient Living teaches us that we have three resources available to each of us…Time, Money, and Energy. During the past year, I pushed all three to their limits.

Resilient Living also teaches that challenging situations, although difficult, can teach us and grow us as humans. So, I have been thinking about what I learned.

The big takeaway for me is that all three of our resources, money, time, and energy, are limited. For much of my life, I thought money was my only limited resource. I believed time and energy were unlimited. But those resources are also limited… I found out the hard way;) We need to take care of ourselves and our resources as we go, and not let the imagined urgency of the situation, press us beyond the limits of our resources.

I thought I had already learned that, but I guess I needed a refresher course. Even my little dog Maggie instinctively knows her resources are limited and need to be conserved.

She loves me to throw her little squeaky toys for her every morning and afternoon. It has become a bonding ritual for us;) But once the squeaker doesn’t squeak…she won’t run after it. I can do whatever silly antics I might think of like winding up my arm like I’m going to throw a pitch, but if that dang green frog has a broken squeaker, that dang green frog is dead to Maggie. She has no interest in it at all. She would rather wait very patiently looking out the windows for a possible squirrel intruder in our yard.

So, I guess, I have learned quite a bit from my difficult year…

1. My resources are not unlimited, not to be squandered over a false sense of urgency.

2. With a little patience, somethings fix themselves.

3. Perhaps you are like me. Our sense of urgency to get everything taken care of, comes from our need for certainty. When change happens, as it does, uncertainty naturally comes with the change. We believe uncertainty, or fear of the unknown, is solved by getting the situation under control, and asap. A bit of patience goes along way as self care to add some gentle perspective to the situation.

Give some thought to how this might apply. We think that once we are over a certain age we will acquire some wisdom. Yes, we do gain wisdom in many areas. But if we are still living and growing, we will still find more change, more uncertainties, more growth. That growth comes with lessons to learn.

I don’t know about you, but Me and Mike, and Maggie never want to stop growing, and learning, and chasing squeaky toys. ❤️
​

We are all in this together, Susan and Mike

​