Education

Education is a good thing. In college, we students were essentially told that we were being taught how to learn. Or, said differently, we were told that we were being taught how to teach ourselves -- for a lifetime of learning.

Education provides a foundation for this lifetime of learning. It can be done without a formal education. History is full of self-taught leaders who are scholars, teachers and extremely knowledgeable. A formal education, however, is a blueprint of sorts. It helps you find shortcuts, and provides a potential structure to finding out what you want or need to know.

With computers and the internet today, finding information is exceedingly rapid, literally at your fingertips. But, information is not education. In my mind, education is what you do with information...how you use it. Education makes sense of information, if you will.

Discernment is an important concept, I believe, when it comes to information-gathering. The above-mentioned computer/internet certainly provides information. Discernment is the filter one applies to its veracity and usefulness. Is this true? What is it saying, and not saying? Do I need/want to know more? What, and who, do I trust?

Ah. Trust. Another important concept in the educational process. We are taught to trust our teachers. We are told to trust those in authority.

Alas, through experience we come to see that trust is often not deserved. Respect has to be earned, not given, right? And respect is an important element of trust? Isn't it?

Before I get too philosophical, let's see what we've got here: education, information, discernment, trust, respect. Now what does all this have to do with learning to ride a horse?

Clearly, learning to ride a horse is a big physical, mental, emotional and spiritual challenge. That's why it's so thrilling. It can be so FULL. It hits on all cylinders. It asks you to fully engage in this communication with a half-ton (or more), 4-legged creature created by God to help us learn more about ourselves, along with hauling us and our stuff around.

The key component of education is the teacher. No way around it, these underpaid, overworked people who feel the call to help educate the young and not-so-young are, well, essential. You wouldn't necessarily know it from the importance they're given in decision-making and the economy, for example, but that's another discussion.

So, here I am in need of a teacher to help me learn how to ride this horse. After my great Winter of Discontent, as it were, I needed that teacher. Spring arrived, and so did my teacher.

I should insert here that I've always been a good student, in the traditional sense. I like to please. I like to brilliantly perform what the teacher asks and be perfect. School systems were designed for people like me. Teacher spits it out; I spit it back. Voila'! I'm educated.

Never mind that the kid in the back of the room bored to death and shooting spitballs became president of his own company because he was a rule-breaker. Or, that the girl who refused to follow instructions as the teacher gave them is now in Congress, breaking rules over there. I was the good student, and was rewarded with those good grades, accordingly.

Now, in my post-50 era, I was still looking for how to get a good grade. Life, unfortunately, does not often work like school did. It's a little less black and white -- all part of that learning how to teach yourself stuff.

What was the equivalent of earning an "A" in this horseback-riding thing? Spelling, and reading, and arithmetic, and history...they all had come easily to me. This, I was learning every day, was not.

I needed to learn a new way of learning, which I discovered meant being a participant in the process, in a big way. What information came into my brain had to be filtered through my body and communicated to the horse. Whew! It's like learning to think in a foreign language -- or even dream in that language. You'll know you've integrated it into yourself when that happens.

I wasn't thinking of any of this at the time, however. I just found out that a fellow boarder at my barn -- a woman for whom I had the utmost respect because she looked like a horsewoman to me -- had agreed to take on the unholy prospect of being the resident riding instructor.

When can I start taking lessons??

I'm sure she was thinking "What have I gotten myself into?" Well, long story short: she changed my life, in the most positive of ways. She taught me how to learn how to ride my horse.

I'll say that again: She taught me how to learn how to ride my horse.

Only, not in any way I could have imagined or predicted. And, probably not in any way she could have imagined or predicted. This was an education. She started to teach me how to teach myself. She showed me how to fill my horseback-riding toolbox with the necessary tools.

Unfortunately, there were some setbacks along the way...

Breathing Room

One of the dictionary definitions of breathe is to make manifest. Another is live. Another is to pause and rest before continuing.

Remembering to breathe has always been a problem of mine. Really. I'd be concentrating on something so hard I'd forget to breathe. It might have been taking tests, or learning dance steps or any of a number of tasks I was concentrating soooo much on, that I'd just forget to breathe.

I'd hold my breath. Holding your breath you are not relaxed. You are not making anything manifest, you are not living and you are not pausing and resting before continuing. You are frozen, tense...and waiting. Probably waiting to take your next breath, only maybe you don't realize that.

The word inspiration (also respiration) comes from the same root meaning. Inspiration is to breathe life into an idea. When you don't breathe, there is no life. Nothing can happen. Dead.

So, I realized that a lot of the time I was on this horse I was holding my breath. That couldn't have felt very relaxing to Autumn, and I'm sure I was not feeling very relaxed. I was waiting for what she was going to do next. I was in a very re-active mode, not an active one. If you are not active, you are not the leader. You need to be the leader of your horse. They are waiting for you to tell them what to do.

From the horse's point of view, a "leader" who is perched as rigid as a clothespin on their back, not breathing, is not a leader. They are a nervous wreck. How much confidence do you think that inspires in the horse?

To my little horse's credit, she didn't particularly take advantage of my non-leadership stance. She was giving me the benefit of the doubt, more or less. Are you asking me to do this? Are you asking me to go faster? Are you asking me to not move? Poor thing, she was probably trying to constantly second-guess me.

Other horses are not so kind. They get pissed off. What the !@##! are you doing up there? What do you want? Get off my back!! Now.

In my head I might have been thinking "I want to go right." My body might have told her "go straight" or "I'm not sure where I want to go." So she'd decide for us. Breathing may not be the total answer to being a balanced leader, but you sure can't be one without it!

Before you can get your body to relax (and your mind) you need to breathe. Consciously, sometimes. In...out...in...out. See? Not so hard. It can be, though, once your brain gets taken over with the ugly What Ifs. What if she (fill in the blank)...bucks, rears, jumps sideways, bolts, stops, goes too fast, goes too slow (never an issue with Autumn)? Never mind that she'd never done most of this.

Now that fear had entered the equation, and I accepted that unexpected, bad things can happen, I was waiting for the "what next." What else was she going to do? I was waiting for something bad to happen. Not a particularly confident, leadership place to be...neither in life in general, nor with a horse, specifically.

I was totally projecting into the future, instead of being present in the moment, as they say. The NOW was playing second fiddle to the NEXT. I was always worried. Worry is putting fear into the future.

Unfortunately, the light bulb about breathing didn't really go on. I'd think of it, I'd stop and breathe, and make it through the day. But it just doesn't change that fast. Going from rigid, non-breathing, lack of confidence to relaxed and breathing and confident does not happen overnight, just because you make that decision. Getting your brain on board is one thing; getting your body on the same page is quite another. Especially when you are in your, shall we say, mature years?

It takes time. It takes patience. It takes determination. It takes learning about your limits as well as your horse's. It takes discipline. It takes a teacher.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Boy, was I ready. Now...where's that teacher?