Where the headwaters of technology and rural living converge is where you’ll find the current of my life. Incongruous? Perhaps at first, but I find the two merge quite nicely. I enjoy the fact that I can spend my Friday morning linked to whomever in the world I need to be, wherever they happen to be; and by late afternoon be leaning against the rails of a breaking pen watching my favorite cowboy Charlie lead in a mare who is convinced saddles, bridles, and cowboy accoutrement in general is the source of all horror in the world.
The troubles of one mare and the cowboy charged with fixing them could prove to be a pleasant distraction from my own workaday issues. No ringing phones, incoming emails, or inter-office drama. Simply, one horse and one guy that doesn’t particularly care for said horse to buck the next person that gets up on her over the fence and into a cactus. And so they begin. Charlie saddles up the mare and, sensing what’s about to occur, she gives a pretty violent display of her bucking and lunging abilities. Not wanting to fight that fight quite yet, our cowboy decides to let his charge blow off a little steam, snaps her on the hind end and sets her off at a pretty good pace around the pen. This leaves Charlie in the middle, doing very little other than leaning back on his spurs and watching his issue circle him over and over and over. Every ten minutes or so, she slows up a little, Charlie steps towards her, she snorts or stomps or snaps and the whole process of circling begins anew. This goes on. And on. And on a little longer.
Progress, however imperceptible, is being made. Each time the mare is approached she is a little more weary of the process, a little less wary of Charlie. She is, however, nowhere near what he wants the end product to be and Charlie is occasionally not a patient man. “Lets move this along,” he announces, pulls his hat down, and hops aboard. What happened next was not good – twenty minutes of bucking, kicking, and occasional bouts of swearing (by Charlie, not the horse). Ten minutes of exertion and excitement. Nearly an hour of prior progress lost.
Sitting in the dirt, Charlie looks at me, looks at the mare, considers the situation. Dusting himself off, he announces, “I am losing this battle because I’m losing my patience.” And then Charlie starts over. Back to the very beginning, he repeats each stage in the process one more time until he is back to where he had been an hour ago and then he keeps going. As the sun goes down, the cowby and the problem horse have a working relationship. Problems still exist, but they are being tackled in manageable increments.
So now I’m back in my office, back in the professional eddy of the current and glad that the personal side of my life flows into these waters with such relevance. Office drama or 850 lb horses, it makes no difference, the results are the same when you hop on a problem without being prepared for how hard it’s going to kick back. If you don’t have the patience to do it right, I can’t imagine you’ve got the time to start all over.
That all begs the question of why the horse needs to be broken in the first place, though. Why do WE need to be broken in order to fit into this world? Or do we still kick?
There are two basic ways to come to an understanding with a horse. The first is to throw your spurs on, screw your hat down, get on and fight it out until either you or the horse realizes you had better do what the other says or something painful happens. The second is to show the horse that what you’re wanting it to do isn’t as scary as what it suspects, giving it reason to trust you when you call upon it to do something else it might not be sure of. In the latter process, that horse earns your trust too. I know a bit about horsemanship but a lot more about Physics and, trust me, if 850 lbs of muscle, hooves, and teeth doesn’t want you up on its back you ain’t gonna be there for long. Though one person may steer and direct, there is still a partnership and a communication there and, at least in my humble opinion, that’s how we should fit into the world. I don’t think we need to be broken to do it, and I don’t think we need to do any breaking.