When Things Fall Apart

Luck Favors The Fool

***Audio Sample*** (For full audio, scroll to the bottom)

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Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. ~ Marilyn Monroe

We humans are the great hanger-ons. We hang on long after the train has left the station, the ship has sailed and the writing has begun to fade on the wall. We hang onto fear, anger, bitterness, grudges and disappointment, but on the upside, we also hang on to love, hope, faith and trust in a better world and future, quite often despite evidence to the contrary. It’s one of my favorite things about humanity, our propensity for hope and optimism.

Many years ago when I was about four years old, my mother and I went to the local riding school where I was to have a lesson on Stjaertni, the kind little Icelandic pony upon whom I first learned to ride. Stjaertni, however, was lame or sick and the grown ups decided I would instead have a lunging lesson on my mother’s usual mount, an endlessly kind, large, gangly black Trakhener mare named Flipper, probably on account of her long mare ears that flopped as she moved. I was equal parts thrilled and intimidated by the mare’s size, about double that of Stjaertni. Finally, I was going to ride a big horse!

As the instructor held the line and Flipper obediently traveled in a circle around her, I rode with great pride and dignity until Flipper misunderstood a command and willingly set off in a quiet canter. Completely unprepared for the much larger, rounder experience of a big horse canter, I leaned forward and clung to her neck, squealing in abject terror. This Flipper found rather disturbing and understandably, she sped up. Well, I thought she did. I thought she ran like the wind and bucked like a bronco.

I continued to cling to her neck like a screaming lunatic monkey until the instructor managed to convince Flipper it had all been a silly misunderstanding. She slowed Flipper to a trot, then the walk, and finally, quite politely really, a halt. At which point I let go and slid to the ground, landing at Flipper and the instructor’s feet. Hitting the soft sand in a crying heap, I was quite convinced I had just barely survived the ride of a lifetime with my life intact. Clearly, Flipper had flipped, and the terror must be written on everyone’s faces, plain to see.

One look at the faces of my mother and the instructor suggested what I knew deep down. What was plain to see was that I was likely mistaken in my interpretation of the experience. But still I held on to my terrifying version of events until even I felt embarrassed by my commitment to a drama that well, never really was. It almost matched the embarrassment I felt at utterly failing at making the most of the opportunity to ride a big horse, which, to a four year old, is as big a deal as the big horse itself.

Later, I would wonder why I made such a big deal out of what was ultimately, a storm in a glass of water. Flipper never put a foot wrong, she simply changed gaits, quietly and with no ill intent. She didn’t create the drama, nor did she, thankfully, react to my sense of it. She did exactly what one hopes a wonderful school horse would do - she closed her eyes and thought of her country and waited it out, focused on the instructor rather than the screaming student. Long after the event itself, I finally understood the real pain that I was acting out in all my drama. It was the pain of the embarrassment of what felt like failure.

It was all on me, and my need to build something bigger out of an initial shock, and then hang on to it, in order to deflect from a much greater pain, the pain of shame. And in doing so, I completely spoiled the experience for everyone, but most especially, for me. My hopes for the ride, and my sense of prowess, my identity as a butt kicking horsey girl, had fallen apart. At least, I managed to find a soft place to land, and learn a thing or two about myself.

One of the toughest things about training horses is letting them and their sense of identity and accomplishment in relation to humans, fall apart, but at times, it is necessary. A horse may be superbly talented but trained very poorly, or he may be both untalented and trained poorly; either way, when his ability to balance and organize well has been disrupted, his body and mind are full of road blocks, dead ends and neurological pile ups. There are no soft places for him to land, only bracing, interim solutions, pitfalls and speed bumps.

However, even if it causes them pain and discomfort to continue as they are, horses can be as brainwashed, set in their habits, beliefs and convinced of their answers as any human, especially if they have been punished in the past for answering differently. In order to help them fall apart in order to fall together better, they have to go through a dismantling. Like a puzzle where the pieces have been forced together whether they fit or not, their beliefs about being handled and ridden by humans have to be pried apart in order to let them find a new and better perspective and understanding of what that might look like.

Often the only way to get a new message across is to confuse them. To ignore their responses without punishment, to seem oblivious or even poorly educated yourself, until they start asking questions instead of shouting their rote answers at you. So often, I see myself reflected in their confusion, only they are looking at me the way I must sometimes look out at life, when life simply refuses to respond to me in the manner I have deemed appropriate.

A horse’s biggest fear is falling down, because a downed horse is a vulnerable horse, the one the wolves get to eat. Many horses are poorly trained in such a way that they do not get to use their necks as intended - for balance - rather, since they are so prohibited, they learn to rely on the rider or auxiliary equipment to hold them up, so to speak. This causes them undue stress, but they adjust as best they can, finding crutches to prop them up in the way of bracing joints and placement of weight.

So to then remove the crutches, to let them fall apart rather than supporting poor ways of balancing, to let them stumble, feel off balance until they allow you to show them a better way to distribute weight, a way that incorporates their natural biomechanics and exquisite sense of balance, can be terrifying, aggravating and confusing for them at first.

I tell them as kindly as I can, that it’s a necessary process we all go through from time to time. We are all humbled by life now and then, and learn to ask better questions than the answers we cling to. How else are we to grow and improve?

It can be as tough for a trainer or rider as the horse to go through this. It is often uncomfortable, sometimes courting danger, and never particularly kind to the ego of a person who likes to look good and in charge on a fine horse, and who doesn’t like that?

But as many spiritual gurus like to point out, while you can’t pour from an empty cup, neither can you fill one already full. In order to replace one learning with another, we must first relinquish the previous one. We must first accept we may not know it all, or all the possible outcomes to the fears we face. And there’s the rub, for we humans love to hang on to what we think we know to be true.

I try to remember this when life gets confusing, when I’m feeling dismantled and none of my usual answers bring me peace, when the ride gets rocky, my crutches crumble and I can’t keep my equilibrium with ease. I try to step back and let my idea of things fall apart, just to see if there might be a better way for them to fall together, a softer place to land than I might even think possible.

I don’t always pull it off. I don’t always want to give up my crutches once I identify them. Truth told, I often catch myself clinging to them and Flipper’s neck while howling like a crazed monkey.

But sometimes! Sometimes, I try my luck. I sit up, throw my crutches in the air and my fears to the wind, and enjoy the ride like a fool, hoping like hell that if I fall, I land in a soft place.

More often than not, I do. After all, as we say in Danish, luck favors the fool.

***Full Audio***

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