Every now and then in our daily routines we catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of our eye that signifies a bigger picture. It may have seemed like something trivial at first glance. Later we realize what we saw gave us a wider perspective and became a marker for how to live better. We see a child stop to pick up a piece of trash and it reminds us of what a clean street could look like. Waiting in the rain for a bus, an elderly lady opens her Green Bay Packers umbrella, and we see enthusiasm in a new light.
The pictures we see out of our peripheral vision are made up of these kinds of snapshots, the ones that make up the movie passing before us. They are here and gone in a flash, but in the corners of our minds they hit pay dirt and register deeper in our consciousness. I saw one of those snippets come to life recently at the Greatest Arabian Horse Show, a competition at a huge arena near Phoenix, Arizona. It too was a snapshot that came and went quickly but widened my perspective for a moment.
A trainer in a rink was working with his horse, an auburn two-year-old thoroughbred named Profound Presence, who was still feeling her oats. Using a training stick, the seasoned trainer moved the horse delicately around the rink, communicating with the horse through simple gestures and redirection. The horse’s education came at a tender time for the animal, a coming-of-age experience requiring nuanced guiding to build its self- esteem. For any young horse, but particularly sensitive Arabians like this one, adolescence is a time of insecurity requiring discipline and monitoring. When such a patient approach is taken with a young Arabian horse, as I witnessed, trust slowly trots in to replace insecurities, and a show horse begins to develop. What begins as an awkward horse standing alone, like a girl at her first dance, transforms into a princess dancing elegantly across the floor.
But the horse I was watching had to first learn to be comfortable in the same space with her trainer, and the trainer had to learn when to give her that space. I posted a video of this training session on Instagram. Just follow me at authorJeffbender and you can see it there.
You will observe the horse trainer and his Arabian horse working together. These horses are readily identified by their long necks and trailing tails, creating the horse silhouette we have often seen in storybooks. I was struck by the developing relationship between the trainer and his insecure student. Although the video is short, there is much going on here that portrays a deeper lesson, and watching the two together, I was reminded of how much courage it takes to work through fear and come out the other side.
As the trainer directed the horse to move this way and that I felt that I was being taken to church with a lesson in humility. Certainly, the horse was going through some growing pains, adjusting to the uneasy space between itself and its teacher.
The snapshot I glimpsed was also a reminder of the history of the horse itself, a magnificent animal that has been rising from the Arizona red dirt for eons. It has a heritage that is emotionally stirring when we consider that thousands of years ago horses were completely wild, galloping across unbridled fields, with the only bits in their mouths being the bits of grass that fed them. Now, this thousand-pound animal, Profound Presence, was responding to the whims of a feathery whip, and I witness not only the animal’s musculature and power, but also its intelligence and sensitivity.
The Arabian is not a breed that is pushed around or forced into submission, unless you want a fight on your hands. Winning over the trust of an Arabian horse is a painstaking process. It is slow, and tedious work and often, the progress is undetectable. In the end, what learning takes place shows itself not in a performance but in their shared space. It is an emotional bond, a head space where they both can be comfortable, illustrated by this comment from the trainer:
“How many times do we allow another to be near us without making any demands on them?”
In my little brain the answer is not very often. The young horse is insecure in the ring, the physical space, but the shared head space they occupy covers a much larger area. Watching the back and forth between a horse and its trainer, I was reminded that these teachable moments we are invited into have the potential to be richer if we stop making demands on each other’s head space and own the space together. When we do, we often find a hallowed ground of mutual trust.
Interestingly, our Arabian thoroughbred was having trouble showing or “giving its right side” to the trainer. Every time the trainer approached that side of the horse, the horse turned away. This was an insecurity that had to be addressed and worked through, and it was going to take some courage on the part of the horse, and some careful coaching on the part of the trainer.
We can see immediately the parallels with our own insecurities and weaknesses. We all avoid our down sides like the plague, preferring to rest in the comfort of our strong suits, especially with other people. Who among us makes a point of placing ourselves around those who show us our weaker side?
Most of get very good at avoiding that kind of thing. We’d much rather trot behind the safety of our own fences than be in the presence of our weakness. Like our horse avoiding her right side, we can sometimes avoid our weaknesses, but we are left walking around looking at life out of one eye, seeing the world in halves and not in the whole. We become hollow versions of ourselves, untrainable, and put out to pasture.
When I was watching Profound Presence, I noticed the trainer used the word “demand.” However, he was not insistent as much as he was requesting the horse obey, followed by immediately “giving” or rewarding the horse with space to build increments of trust. Many times, the trainer gets in the horse’s face but does not challenge the horse’s space.
And guess what happens?
Given the freedom, the horse gently moves back towards the trainer as if to say, “I’m ok by myself, but I’d rather be with you.” It is that same kind of moment we all hope for with those we want to be close to. We give space, we back off, we quit making demands. This build trusts, with the result often a nuzzle from the nose of a Profound Presence.
“We got this,” the horse continues to say, “I may have a weakness, sure. I may be struggling here, I may be afraid, I may not like my right side and what is out there, but if you show me, and carefully help me along, if you direct me along this path I don’t understand, then I’m going to trust that path instead of my own and come your way. I don’t want to, but I’ll do it with your help.”
What strikes me so vividly is the willingness on the part of the trainer and the horse to stand together without demanding anything from each other. This seems to also illustrate what our human connections could look like if we yielded to our mutual uncomfortable spaces and helped each other through our weakness.
Is that even possible in the world we live in now? Can we walk into the ring and be shown our vulnerable areas without turning away? Can we trust that a Wiser teacher, a profound presence is there with us, nudging us forward into an unknown space? And finally, can we trot out into the world’s upheaval and know Our Trainer has our back?
There is a horse that is doing exactly that out in Arizona. She isn’t a horse that is trying to be profound, but a horse willing to be shown the ropes. There’s no kicking or stomping, biting, or running away. There are just a few graceful steps being taken by a teacher and a student willing to be in each other’s presence without demanding anything.