I started writing this in my head for you at around lunchtime and it was going to be a story all about joy. One of our mares, a complex, sensitive soul who has been hard to help, finally had the breakthrough I’d been waiting and hoping for. The joy was not just for her, but for her young human, who is a very special presence in my life. The young one had worked and worked, and waited and waited, and been patient and true, and I had worked along with her, and at last, after months of reversals and despair, the light shone.
It was so beautiful that I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. I exclaimed, at one point, ‘This is one of the best days of my life.’
The fates heard me and laughed and laughed.
They didn’t send me a vicious storm, but they conjured up enough of a squall to knock me off balance. It was one of those things which I should be able to deal with easily and professionally, and on a rational level I can. On an emotional, irrational level, I feel it like a blow and the door swings open on its hinges to let in a drunken gremlin, who wants to tell me I’m not good enough.
I lost a client. This happens, from time to time, because I don’t suit everyone. I ask a lot of the people I work with. I go deep and I go slow. I’ve got no magic wands or quick fixes. The lovely thing is that when this works, it means the relationship is profound and long-term. I’ve got clients I have worked with for years, and I know them inside out, and I go through their triumphs and tragedies with them, and I feel a profound sense of usefulness and satisfaction.
You can hear the good old rational brain at work there. That is what I think of as my kind, sensible grown-up, who knows the score and understands about not taking things personally and doesn’t believe in making a fuss.
But I also have an inner teenager, who goes from the mountain peak to everything is ruined in a heart beat. That self began wailing. She did not want to be consoled. Her song was: I was having a day of joy and now it is all wrecked. She came from a broken home and abandonment is one of her greatest fears and every single abandonment klaxon was going off.
I have a theory about these moments, and I put it into practice. It is: you can’t call in the grown-up too soon. You have to allow the wail, feel the hurt, be completely irrational, get bent out of shape. You have to - literally or metaphorically - shout and swear and stomp as the gremlins tell you their doom stories. (Because the inner teenager does believe in making a fuss, and I have learned to let her.)
And then, you have your glorious choice. (I absolutely live by the power of choice.) You can go on telling yourself the disaster stories and the end of everything tales; you can sing the All Is Lost song. Or, you can get that grown-up into the room and welcome yourself back into the reality-based community.
The reality is that I didn’t suit someone. It’s so much better that people realise this early and politely take themselves off, because otherwise it’s like hopping about with a stone in both of our shoes. The reality is that I’m actually glad that the person had the courage to say so. They will find what they need with somebody else, and that’s what we all want - to find what we need.
And here’s another lovely thing the grown-up knows. One emotion doesn’t cancel the other out. I had a moment of sadness and regret, but that does not mean that the joy has gone. That glorious, sunny morning of sheer loveliness is still there, in my memory and in my heart. I’ve even written it down, so it will be preserved forever.
This is my processing, and I’m so glad I learnt it because otherwise I would be wasting so much time getting shipwrecked and not knowing how to find my way to shore. Sorrows come (not in single spies but in battalions, as Shakespeare so wonderfully said), but they do not cancel out the joys. They can live alongside them, and that may be one of the true secrets of life.
Just as I was finishing all this processing, still feeling a little bruised, but finding my equilibrium once again, something happened which put such a smile back on my face.
Our lovely farrier, Wendy, has been with us since she finished her apprenticeship. Good farriers are like gold dust and I snapped her up young, hoping she would be with us forever. Her book is completely full now, so I feel profoundly lucky to have her. All the mares adore her and get all dreamy and happy when she comes.
She was here earlier in the week and Florence and the red mare had a delightful time investigating her fascinating farrier’s truck and checking everything was in the right place and sniffing all the alluring hidden places. It was so sweet and funny and Wendy snapped some pictures and I just saw them on her Facebook page. She wrote, ‘If only they were all this chilled on farrier day.’ She added a little smiley heart emoji.
And, in an instant, all the jangled feelings of abandonment went away. It wasn’t because Wendy said something nice about my horses, although of course that is always gratifying. It was that she chose the exact right word, the one that I mind about the most. I spend the majority of my time getting my horses to a place where they are relaxed and happy. When they are chilled, I know that I have done my job, and that job is what gives me meaning and purpose. (All of us humans, I believe, need meaning and purpose.)
If I was invested in flying changes or jumping huge fences or doing the perfect collected canter, that sweet remark might have glanced off me. As it was, I felt that beautiful, gleaming sense of coming home you get when someone acknowledges you. When someone really gets it.
There’s another part to this. Farriers do hard and sometimes dangerous jobs. If they have to deal with horses who are not chilled, they can get injured. I respect them greatly and it’s a source of pride that I have my mares in a good frame of mind for Wendy, polite and easy and responsive, to make her job a pleasure rather than a chore. And her post made me feel that I had done that.
So there it was, a day in three acts. I’ve come back to the beginning, as I write these words - back to the deep, singing pleasure which my mares give me, an incredible gratitude for their loveliness, a high delight in the fact that their brilliance is sometimes noticed by people I admire.
I used to want everyone on the whole internet to see the wonder of the red mare, and I posted endless stories about her and waited for the applause as if I were a seal begging for fish. I had to do a little work on my need for external validation. I’ve managed to let go of the desperate desire to get my passport stamped by complete strangers. (Goodness, that was exhausting.) But I do value the opinions of my tribe. If a friend who is good with horses pays the red mare a compliment, it means something and it will make me smile for days.
This is what I always come back to - no day, no life, no year can be one of pure joy. There will always be glitches and setbacks and moments when you are caught off balance. But I can choose to return to the joy, to trust that it is always there, waiting for me. And that makes all the difference.
PS. I pinched Wendy's photograph, because it was too good not to share.