Wedges of Wisdom: The Bond

I don't know why it's taken me this long to figure out, but the following hit me while making buffalo cauliflower the other night (first time ever, promised myself I would try something new every week this year. Food is an easy way to satisfy that promise since I'm so far to the left of an adventurous eater I'm actually to the right):

You know that feeling, the one you get when you can sense someone you know and love starting to wander into territory - maybe it's politics, religion, strong moral opinions - that you don't get fuzzy feelings about entering? Admit it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's that little piece of our conscious in the back of our brains going "Don't go there! Don't engage! Abort! Abort!"

That feeling has nothing to do with any number of excuses you might come up ("I'll take 'I Don't Know Enough About This Topic to Have a Valid Opinion' for $500, Alex") It's about you knowing - before the conversation has even begun - that you won't be heard. You don't need to agree with someone to remain cordial. You don't have to like what they have to say. You can even disagree vehemently with them and still have a good relationship. 

You just need to know that they'll handle your thoughts with care. You need to know that you can feel safe displaying stubbornness, ignorance, heck maybe even a little bit of closeted bigotry because hey, you're still learning how to undo what society/your upbringing taught you. You need to know that the other person not only recognizes your worth as a human being but values you enough to offer you your dignity back when you show ignorance and display humility when it is they who have been led astray. 

You need to know you can be authentic.

But in these scenarios you recognize immediately that you can't, and that's when you dig in deep for a bitter fight or entirely sidestep and frantically distract and divert and redirect.

THIS is where that feeling comes from. It's the one that is telling you that no matter how much this person cares about you, they can't truly see or accept you.

This lack of ability to connect seems more common than uncommon. It is part of why I believe so many of us struggle with understanding horses. What do we do when our horses present us with something real, something intense, something that makes our insides churn or our heart pound?

We tend to either dig in deep or entirely sidestep.

We either feel the stab of anger flowing through us and start to fight the with the horse or we go into passive survival mode and avoid any level of confrontation.

The problem is neither option ends well. If we fight we erode trust. If we retreat we become unable to show them that perhaps there's another way, perhaps a better way. We don't want to punish them for their ideas, we just want them to give us the courtesy of considering ours. 

What's funny is that this food-inspired epiphany (I still haven't figured out what exactly it was about the recipe-making process that did it) had nothing to do with horses and everything to do with dynamics I've witnessed in my own life, especially as I've learned how to navigate accepting the trauma from my past even when others close to me haven't. But as I'm still realizing, how you live your life is how you work with your horses and how you work with your horses is how you live your life. There is no separating line between the two.

So you can either cultivate a relationship with your horse where you allow him to speak authentically and offer him the dignity of truly listening when he does, or you can require him to simply absorb the fact that you aren't willing to accept a truth different from the one you hold so dear.

The reward for the former is one of the most authentic relationships you will ever have in your life - "the bond" that so many of us are desperately seeking with our horses. The punishment for the latter is him knowing that even if he wants so badly to trust in you, he can't. 

I don't think the vast majority of us try to instill this in our horses and yet so many of us do because we just don't know better. We don't know better because we can probably count on less than one hand the number of relationships we have where we can be authentic on that level. We haven't practiced enough because we don't have enough people to practice with. 

Vulnerability is a tough sell in this day and age, but the consequences for an unwillingness to be vulnerable are too great. Don't sell yourself short: you have all the tools you need already. You just might need to summon up the courage to go out on the limb and try.