The one that didn’t go over
- a different equine, a different day, but for the time it was, still on the other side of the obstacle.
Sometimes humans surprise me. They do this by pointing out things to me that I miss myself – it gets me thinking about my way of living in this crazy world.
Horses do the same thing. With horses, the things that I realize often start without words. They are there as feelings and awarenesses, arising out of connections between the horse and myself that doesn’t really need ‘worded’ thoughts. Sometimes I translate these into words, write about them in this blog, perhaps share them with another human. But sometimes they just are inside of me, working on the changes within me that are yet to be made. I think that it is in unspoken realizations that I get the most equine wisdom.
But recently a human said something that has made me think. He had just participated with a group of humans quickly accomplishing the goal of getting a horse over the obstacle in the center of the arena. There had been several horses in the arena and the group had succeeded at the task of getting one of the horses over the obstacle.
And this is what he said: That one of the other horses didn’t go over and wouldn’t go over if we did it the same way.
In our many years of doing this activity no one in the debriefing has ever shifted the focus onto the other horses that didn’t go over. We always talk about the one that did, what contributed to the completion of the task, how all of that is a metaphor for getting things done in our day to day lives.
Several times we have had salesman in our program talk about getting “the low hanging fruit” – those sales that are within easy reach. Other than identifying that the “high hanging fruit” takes a lot more effort, they really don’t feel too much responsibility to it – they can leave it for another product or salesperson and take their own easier sales as successes. For them, the horses that didn’t go over the obstacle are quite irrelevant – not even given a second thought.
Not so for our recent human. He was quite aware that the easiest one to get over was the one that went over, and that the horses that didn’t go over were to be given a second thought, and maybe a third thought, and maybe a completely different approach.
And you may not be surprised that this recent human is a special education teacher. He talked about the “left behinds” that exist in his world, the students that don’t respond along with the rest of their classes. And while a salesman is not likely to feel a responsibility to clean up all the potential sales, making sure they get the product and make the payment, a special education teacher does take on that responsibility in our school system. And let’s be thankful for that!
Now in our debriefing, when it became apparent that this human in saying what he said had made me think of the value and the meaning of the one that didn’t go over, discussion started to shift to the other horse. It wasn’t long before the group responded to the challenge of getting that other one over the obstacle. It took a little longer, and a different strategy but it happened.
By the way, the horse that at first didn’t go over, but in the end did, went over embedded in the group of horses moving together getting over the obstacle with the strength of the herd that could take him there. We had never seen that before in doing this activity. It looked a bit out of control and chaotic because there was a lot of vigorous horse movement and humans trying to keep it directed. But it was sweet.
What about the left-behinds in your life? Gosh, there are a whole lot of them when we think about it: the tidying tasks that we never get to; the work responsibilities that require us to work outside of our comfort zone; the relationships that are more complicated or less rewarding; the workers or students that just don’t get it as quickly as do the others.
For me, perhaps I need to somehow embed those things in the middle of the stuff that goes more easily, still insuring that they get the attention and care they require, but letting the energy of the easier successes carry them along too. And when I think about herd dynamics, I have a hunch that horses have always had the wisdom of doing this, doing it naturally and with what we might call grace.
Whinnying off for now,
Terry
November 13th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
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