Things I’m thinking about
1.
I was poo picking in the paddock yesterday and thinking about our relationship to time. How we can so easily develop ideas about what we need to do or change that can result in ways of living that to my mind are inhumane.
I look around at my horses and even in their domesticated state, the way they structure their day follows a natural order. What would it look like to move through a day where I moved at a natural pace? Just the idea of it makes me take an exhale.
For one I know there would be a lot more space. I would daydream more. I would spend more time just pootling in the paddock. I would write more, ride more, hang out with people I love more. The time that I got out out of bed would change most of every day.
To follow a natural rhythm feels like a series of hours that holds its tasks with more levity, regardless of what specifically they might be.
I think of my people in JoyRide and our conversations around time, and fitting things in. How even those with bright hearts and good intentions, as they all have, struggle with the rhythm of the day. I tell them, I don’t believe this is something for you alone to hold. We are trained into busy-ness meaning goodness. This is no longer an equation I want to play with or to hold.
I will think about humane time. I will think about natural time. I will continue to consider how it is my life can live by both. I will continue to hold our human-ness to a far greater value than our productiveness could ever be.
2.
I’m thinking about decisions, and what it takes to be able to make one. Decisions, it seems, are the mother of everything. If you can’t make one, there is no action that you take, and no action results in, well, nothing. Or even worse, a situation where you are stuck up in your head.
I’m thinking of the words my lovely friend and nature writer, Janisse Ray, shared with me recently:
“There is a huge cultural divide between the sexes when it comes to making decisions. Men make decisions. Most women are not taught to make decisions. They’re not given permission to have a choice. Women do what men decide.
Every day I see examples of this—a woman doing what a man decides.
I’ve been training myself to make my own decisions. In situations where I would normally ask my husband or a friend what they think, I’m forcing myself to stay quiet.
It is wretched. I hate it.”
I wonder about this. I have talked about it with many of my professional friends, those who have students whose love are horses also and we see it as a familiar thread. The action taking component, the ability to make decisions is a struggle that is familiar to most.
Our lack of decision making can be a protective action. An “if I don’t do this in the first place then I can never prove to myself that I’m not capable. It will always be hanging as a question”. It can be because we don’t feel good enough or skilled enough. That we don’t back ourselves enough.
But I see our lack of want to make a decision come up in the most basic of circumstances. Where there would be no fallout or judgement, aside from the one that exists inside our heads.
I have a rule for myself, which is the bringer of great peace. I don’t let myself rest too long in indecision. And there is no such thing as a wrong one. The decision that you made is the only one you ever could.
Liberation exists in the body of decision that is made and moved on from.
3.
I’m thinking how fragile life is. This morning, I found the robust and delicate body of a Bellbird lying on the concrete path. Her fifty shades of moss feathers against the greyness of behind was like an abstract work of art. I picked her up and whispered to her, placed her within the bowels of the Flax, the long grass shielding her from the light. I thanked her for being a bringer of such beauty, wished her well along her way.
4.
Picking up poo, I found a feather, of a design that would be almost impossible to draw. I picked it up and placed it in my pocket. Even the most mundane tasks bear gifts that appear like apparitions on the soil.
The feather was a smile-maker.
Take care of your gentle selves,
xx Jane
