Spring and the Horse Thing

It is Spring. After a long, hard winter it has finally arrived...at least meteorologically. The calendar says it arrives today. It is the Vernal Equinox, one of the two times of year when there's roughly the same amount of day hours as there are night hours. Equinox is the "equal" part, but I had to look up vernal. Since the Equinox in Fall is the Autumnal Equinox, I assumed vernal had something to do with spring, and so it does. The dictionary describes it as being related to spring, and to new beginnings and to youth. Ah, sweet youth.

Is it a strange coincidence that this particular Spring arrives with the world in quite a mess? What is the message of Mother Earth that this time of new beginnings should appear to be all about endings? Tragedies abound, human suffering is escalating, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and now the United States is engaged in another war. One wonders why one should get out of bed in the morning. We watch in fascination as the media numb us with more and more detail -- fiction or fact? -- about the unending crises going on around us.

Yes, change is certainly in the air. The birth pains of new beginnings are quite severe and come with obvious endings, endings that are signalling that perhaps a certain way of being is over. No doubt about it, there is great tragedy in what is happening in the world. Economies are collapsing along with homes, governments and ways of life.

We live in cycles of death and life, and death and life again. It is circular, with each ending being the beginning. They co-exist and define each other, as do dark and light and love and fear. Flip sides of the same coin, or different places on the same Wheel of Life. But there's always Hope, isn't there?

I think I reject the concept of hope. Hope is always putting expectations into the future. Hope is never about now, it's about later. Our leaders tell us to maintain hope but hope does not heal the now. Hope is an outgrowth of despair and despair is an expression of giving up. Promise us anything...nothing...but hang on to hope.

This may seem a bit harsh, for often we feel as if all we have left is hope. We hope that loved ones are still alive, when feared lost. We hope that we will find a job. We hope that we will not lose our homes. We hope for a cure for a disease. We hope we will find love, and peace, and happiness, and safety.

My point is that being told to have hope reminds me of my Catholic upbringing. We were taught that life here pretty much stinks. It's hard and painful and full of sorrow, but when we die we will go to Heaven if we've followed the rules. So, see? It may be harder than Hell (literally) while we're here on Earth, but hope for a brighter tomorrow -- when you're dead.

Not much comfort in today's sorrows when the best you can come up with is that it will all be better when you're dead. Not for me, anyway.

One of the small chuckles I have about my horse is that her name is Autumn. But her birthday is now, in the Spring. In just a couple of days she will be ten years old. She and I have been together for nearly five years. We have had many ups and downs, moments of disagreement, lessons, fears, pains, doubts and joys. She is my friend, and I trust that I am as good a friend to her as she is to me.

So I look at this particular Spring, when chaos and tragedies swirl around the planet like a maelstrom of gigantic proportions, and think about Autumn. How it is true that I miss her when I don't see her for a few days. How, after a ride, and she is back in her stall munching on hay, she will look at me with a "you may go now...I am finished with you" look on her face. How, when I am with her, all those sorrows are forgotten for awhile.

To say that I hope that she and I are together for a very long time, is to admit fear that we will not. To say that I hope that we both stay healthy enough to continue as we do, is to acknowledge possible change. To say that I hope I will be able to afford to keep my friend, is to express an unimaginable, although perfectly possible, scenario.

Therefore, I will reject hope. Because, to acknowledge the hope is to acknowledge the doubt and the fear. The better choice, I believe, is to believe. To believe is to be present in today. I choose to believe that whatever happens to Autumn and me, it will be for the highest good of both of us. That will be true if, each day, I make choices based on those "highest good" intentions. Oh, maybe you think there's a lot of hope in believing. Maybe it is just words. But words are powerful and words carry energy.

You might think this is splitting hairs. What's the difference between hope and belief? Who cares? And what does it have to do with horses? I just need to get through today!

Horses do seem to magnify all the other aspects of our lives. Fear about one thing seems to get bigger when it translates to the horse world. Our horses force us to look inside ourselves and examine what we fear, what we believe, what we aspire to and what we intend. If something is amiss with the relationship you have with your horse, look a little harder and I feel you will discover the area of your life that needs a little work. Or play.

We try to live with compassion and empathy towards others, and appreciate it when it comes our way when it's our turn to take a hit or two. In some fashion or another, each ending of one phase of our life -- each tragedy, each loss, each sorrow -- morphs into the beginning of the next.

So perhaps it is appropriate that this Spring is witness to all these chaotic events. With all the endings there are many new beginnings. Vernal also means relating to youth. We are young again, in the Spring. We are being given the opportunity to begin again, perhaps whether we wanted to or not.

Look at it this way, in Horse World Spring means mud. Not just mud, but MUD. This is a very happy time for a horse. Horses are shedding all that winter hair and they itch and mud is soooo delightful to roll in to get rid of that itch! Then we come to the barn and shriek about all the mud and how we're losing our boots out in the paddock and how we'll have to spend a lot of time scraping all that mud off and...finally, we get the thrill of a ride on a beautiful Spring day.

The world is shrieking now, and with good cause. There's a lot of mud to be scraped off. But maybe, just maybe, it will mean a beautiful new beginning. Then we'll all go for a ride and enjoy the sun.