Joy is not a crumb

I'm not a huge sports fan.  In fact, sometimes I think the world would be a better place without professional sports.  But that could be because I have the coordination of an amoeba.  (That is probably insulting to amoebas.  I'm sorry, amoebas.)  While I can appreciate the technical difficulty of hitting a ball a bunch of times or running really fast or jumping really high, doing it competitively isn't something that resonates with me.

I do make an exception, though.  Olympic figure skating is a sport that I will make time to watch.  I am fascinated with the performance and how it is tied to music, and few things make me happier than watching a good skate set to fun music.

My husband and daughter love to watch the skating as well, so we set aside time every night for several nights to watch all of the figure skating events during this year's Olympics.  We were collectively excited to see the successes, we gasped at the falls, and we tapped our toes to the music.  My daughter even "performed" along with the skaters, doing her own spins and leaps next to the TV.

The one thing I noticed, though, was that most of the skaters seemed to struggle with one or more parts of their programs.  There were a surprising number of falls among the elite athletes, and it was hard to watch how disappointed some of them were as they judged themselves more harshly than any official judge and certainly more harshly than I did.

But there was one skater who stood out to me.  His name is Jason Brown and he skates for the U.S.  I realized that watching him skate just made me happy.  I was quite literally smiling at the end of his performance.  His face had been joyful during his skating and he was radiant as he walked off the ice.

Yet there was no chance he would get a medal.  And he knew that going into the Olympics.  You see, he didn't include any of the quadruple jumps that have become an unwritten requirement for earning a medal.  The announcers helpfully pointed that out several times.  They also commented on what a beautiful skater he is and how his artistry on the ice is almost unmatched.  Also, his skating was almost error-free.

In the end, he earned a sixth place finish, and he seemed absolutely delighted.  There was no crying, no falling to the ground in despair, no complaining about how the scoring is skewed toward technical difficulty instead of the artistry that he is so good at, basically none of the other behavior that I was stunned to see in multiple events across disciplines in the world's best athletes at the world's most famous games.  Mr. Brown was so excited to be at the Olympics and skating for his country and that was enough.

If you read about his history or watch interviews with him, you can see that his joy seems to be authentic.  He works hard and has overcome challenges, but he truly loves to skate and perform.

Watching Mr. Brown skate and thinking about the way it made me feel sent me down a rabbit hole of reflection.  I remembered how riding and being with horses used to make me feel when I was a kid.  

When I was my daughter's age, I stayed at my grandma's house for a month every summer.  She had a farm, and even more importantly, she had Skip.  Skip was a 16-hand Quarter Horse that I fell in love with.  When he wasn't being ridden or helping work cattle, he spent his time in a huge pasture - maybe 100 acres.  In the heat of the summer days, I would set out on foot from the house and walk the pasture until I found him, solely for the purpose of standing next to him and breathing in his scent.  To this day, I have never found a horse that smells better than Skip.  He smelled like skin and sweat and sun and outside.  When I rode him all over the countryside (by myself!), I finally felt right with the world and I loved every minute of it.  

Of course, I didn't know much about horse care or riding back then.  As time went on, my parents finally relented and got me a horse of my own.  Over the years, I've owned seven horses and had the opportunity to ride many others.  And I learned a lot more about horses.  

But after watching Mr. Brown skate, it occurred to me that as I've gained knowledge, I've lost a lot of the joy I originally felt.  I don't remember the last time I walked through 90-degree heat with the sun beating on me just to smell a horse because the draw was so powerful, I was helpless to resist.  When I'm constantly thinking about what to feed or whether to blanket or how to trim hooves or what training technique to use, there isn't much room for joy.

Certainly, I know the feeling of working on a particular movement for weeks and months and even years and finally achieving it for three seconds before it fades away.  But why should I be content with three seconds of joy every few months?

As the poet Mary Oliver writes:

Don't Hesitate 

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

So I'll be honest.  I have always thought that joy was a crumb.  I thought that life is full of challenges and you work through them the best you can and every once in awhile, you get some happiness as a reward.

But after reading Ms. Oliver's poem and watching Jason Brown skate, I realized that I need to do a rethink on that one.  And that's exactly what I've been doing.  It's hard to change a pattern of thinking and behavior, but I'm working on it a little at a time.  I want the joy of being with horses back.  I want to breathe them in and love being in their presence even if the sun is beating on me.  (It may be slightly harder to experience joy when being bitten by Virginia's excessive insect population, but I'll work on that when the time comes...)

I've taken two steps in my effort to bring back the joy.  The first is that I wear a bracelet with the words etched into the leather so I get a constant reminder.  The second is that I've tried to be more mindful when I'm working with horses.  Donut is handling being tied for a bit longer now, and when I brush her, I focus on being aware of her and on enjoying being with her instead being as efficient as possible.  As I introduce putting on her headstall, I try to feel her body and any tension that she has and let time stop while I let her think through what I'm asking.  When I ride Star, I have given myself permission to feel her underneath me rather than trying to tell her how to move all the time.  And when I lunge Freya, I try to focus less on how she is moving and more on her connection with me on the lunge line.

The interesting thing is that from a technical standpoint, I'm not making huge gains.  No one watches me with Donut and admires how quickly I get her to accept having a headstall put on (because after several days, she still thinks the headstall is possibly some kind of horse-eating alien despite the fact that she is easily haltered by any idiot).  No one watches me ride Star and tells me how amazing we look (because we simply walk, trot, and canter without falling down).  And no one watches me lunge Freya and is impressed with her lofty and articulated trot strides (because her trot mostly resembles a western pleasure horse).

But I have noticed a change in my mental state.  When I'm not constantly facing an internal dialogue of what I need to be doing to do better, I can feel more from the horse.  And I'm not as worried about problems.  Because seriously, why does it matter if it takes Donut a month to learn how to wear a headstall instead of 20 minutes?  And if Star never competes in 2nd Level dressage, well, I suspect it won't matter to her at all.  And if it takes Freya several months instead of several weeks to learn how to improve her trot on the lunge, what is the big deal?  She's been moving like a western pleasure horse for 8 years, it's probably not going to kill her to move that way for another few months.

In my quest to do better for the horse, I think I lost sight of the horse.  I've spent so much time and money educating myself and trying to make my interactions with horses better.  Taking lessons, reading books, watching videos, attending clinics.  And all of that is valuable.  And I'm certain my horses appreciate better care and better skill from their handler.  But it's time to focus on something different.  I need to be less interested in approval from my instructor or my barn owner or a judge or my horse friends and more interested in approval from my horse.  And I want to rekindle the joy I felt as I child.

This kind of effort is a game-changer, I think.  I'm not quite sure how it will work out, but the idea that joy could be a significant part of my time with horses instead of a blip on the radar screen is so appealing that I can't stop thinking about it.  The great thing is that I have a wonderful role model in my daughter, who loves every minute she spends at the barn and with horses, so if I lose my way, I can look at her and get my bearings again.

Gemma and Star.  Photo by CarlyGPhotography.