05/29/2024
I am going through some of the kind comments underneath the past videos and smiling at the dearness of the Red Mare Crew when I get to a slightly unexpected line. It says, ‘This video isn't impressive at all.’
I burst into laughter. I just find it funny that anyone out there would think that I might be impressive or that I am trying to impress or that impressive is any kind of a word, down at the magic field.
And as I laugh, merrily, I have one of those happy moments that goes: how far you have come.
I think looking back and seeing how far we have come is one of the most delightful things we can do for ourselves. Because once I would not have laughed at that sentence. I’d have been really hurt. I would have felt a horrid thump in my chest, as if someone had shot an arrow to my heart. This would have been followed by a nasty hollow feeling, a sort of ache all down the gullet. And depending where I was in my emotional processing voyage, I’d have taken many hours to get that horrible feeling to go away. (Before the red mare started me on her Self-Improvement Plan and led me to The Place of Peace, it could take anything up to three weeks. Seriously. I had no idea that emotional processing even was a thing. I’d just feel miserable and sh*tty and listen to a lot of Leonard Cohen albums and write many novels and drink martinis until the horror-ache would finally go away.)
And here’s another lovely thing. Not only would I once have been wounded by that sentence, I absolutely WOULD have wanted to impress. In the early days of the red mare, I was doing tap dances and show tunes all over the shop. Look at me! Look at me! Can you tell me I’m fabulous?! I was begging for people to be impressed like a captive seal begging for fish.
How exhausting that was. The most terrible thing about it is that people might be sometimes mildly impressed, for about ten seconds, BUT THAT WAS NEVER ENOUGH. I know now that this is the nature of dopamine spirals, but I had no clue about any of that, in those dark days. So I had to go on, vamping for compliments like a tired old hoofer still doing the rounds of the music halls.
Of course the stranger was not impressed, because there was nothing there to be impressed by, and because that’s not the point of anything I film or write. As I contemplate it, I realise that wanting to impress people might not be a very nice thing at all. I suddenly think: is it too much about ego, and proving points, and being better than? I do think, quite a lot, about you, my Dear Reader. I think about how I would like you to feel, when I take you on one of my endless stories. Mostly, I want us to trot along in shared humanity. I’d like you to smile, and sometimes sigh a sigh of relief, and let your shoulders come down. I’d like you to feel that you are not alone. (I write that sentence a lot, and that is because it is true.) I’m not in the business of impressing you, because I’m far too flawed and human for any of that nonsense.
There was one other fascinating thing which the unimpressed person said, and it also once would have unsettled me and it also now makes me smile. She said, ‘My horses…are not disrespectful. My horses, my mare especially, would never act like that.’
And this is where the red mare has totally set me free. The freedom, which is jolly and beaming and always in a good mood, says, ‘Everyone gets to be unimpressed, and everyone gets to have the horses they want, and everyone gets to look down on other people’s horses if that’s what they need right now.’ There isn’t even a shimmer of passive-aggressive in that. The freedom-voice really means it. I happen not to want my horses to respect me, but I know people who do, and that’s their gig, and it’s so totally none of my business that I need new words for none of my business. My free choice is that I choose to respect my horses, not the other way round. I discovered this idea years ago and it’s worked so happily for all of us and I love what works.
Oh, and I expect I should explain what the ‘never act like that’ was. It was the leading from behind video. We’d paused, and I was banging on about something for you, my dear crew, and then I asked the red mare to walk on and she turned and gave me a Maggie-Smith-in-Downton look and I roared with laughter and went ahead and led her from the front and we went on like that. It wouldn’t occur to me to think that her giving me the look was disrespectful and it wouldn’t matter if that is what it was. (I don’t think that respect is an equine concept. I think it’s a human one. But that’s a whole other hill of beans.)
But here, at the last, as I finally gallop through the finishing line, is the most vital part of all this, and the reason I’ve told you this slightly shaggy horse story - it is that none of it matters. That’s the freedom. And it's a freedom I've trained myself in. Once, so much of it would have mattered. Someone being cross and critical; me not being impressive; the fact that it hurt; the insinuating fear that I was doing it all wrong and I had been busted. Now, not one jot of that obtains. It’s a person expressing their opinion - and I believe passionately in the free expression of thought - and it’s me and the red mare going on our merry way, untouched. The person knows what they believe and I know what I believe and that’s how the world works. I don’t have to be wounded and diminished, as I once would have been. That, right there, is worth all the work. And I wanted to give it to you, because it’s proof of concept, and I adore a proof of concept.
We - you, me, all of us - know what we love and want and need, for our horses, with our horses. That really and truly is our business. And the freedom is to believe in that and do it and laugh like drains when the other people think we are fools.
