Imaginary Sand

One day a week I have no babysitter and have to take my daughter to work with me. The last couple of times I haven't been able to get much done, so this week I came up with a plan. I went to the dollar store and spent twenty bucks on cheap toys, so that instead of bringing toys from home she will have special toys that she only gets to play with once a week, and this is where our story begins.

Lately she has been pretending to pick flowers and berries so one of the things I bought her was a plastic sand pail and shovel so she could "gather berries" and "plant a garden." I also got her some mermaid dolls and sea animal puzzles and thus a beach was born in our alteration shop--a beach which apparently had very stubborn sand.

As I sat working Little Miss cries out in frustration, (I have to insert here, in her defense, that she did not sleep well the night before and was TIRED) "Oh! I can't get this bucket full!"
"What are you trying to fill your bucket with?" I asked.
"Sand!" she declared in exasperation as she held up the shovel.
"Well, keep digging then," I said.
"But I can't get it full!" (Now in tears.)
It was at this point that I tried to reason with her, but what do you say to someone who is dealing with imaginary sand and just can't get as much of it as they think they should have?

Well, as a mom I told her that if the bucket was going to upset her I would have to take it away. I then offered to put a movie on for her so that I just might be able to finish bringing in the heavily beaded wedding dress I had, at that moment, turned completely inside-out. But this got me thinking as I recapped it to my dad later that day, and we had a good laugh, "Do we do this? Do I do this?"

I think that as a whole we are a discontented people. We don't have enough, can't do enough, aren't enough, and why is that? Is someone standing over us telling us what we have to do, be, and have? Sometimes. But even then those people aren't holding guns to our heads. Most of us put the pressure on ourselves and ALL of us get to decide if our buckets are full or empty.

I've got this idea of who I think I should be--a list of talents I want, a vision of how I should look, ideas of how each day should go--and when I fall short I get frustrated. "This damn bucket just won't get full!" And I realized today that I am just like my daughter and her imaginary sand. I'm the one who made up all this stuff. It's my imagination that created the image in my head of what a full bucket looks like and for some reason my imagination is telling me that my bucket is far from full.

I think of how I tried to tell my daughter, "You are the one pretending. It's your bucket. It's your sand. Just decide you have enough and it will all be better." But she is three and was exhausted so of course this sound reasoning was returned with a blank look. I, however, am not three, and though I am tired, I can bow to reason. I can decide that my bucket IS full. I am enough. I am good enough. I do my best almost all the time and I AM ENOUGH, right now, I just decided. My bucket is full. It's my bucket and my sand and so I say that my bucket is full of sand!

Now, is this to say that we should all just settle? Of course not. But there is a difference between setting goals and striving while being happy with yourself in the now--a full and happy bucket with its eye out for some bonus sea shells, so to speak--and beating yourself down, making comparisons, digging and digging and wondering why your bucket is never full. Strive, grow and improve, but don't be brought down by imaginary sand. We can all decide today, "I am enough, and my bucket is full."