The Gift of Equestrian Grudges

I’ve been holding a grudge. There, I said it.

For too long I had a grudge and not just any grudge, it was one that I didn’t even know existed. This thing, this weight I’ve carried around with me and it has helped to color all of my interactions and I was not even aware it was weighing me down or affecting my relationships. To think of all the interactions I’ve had with people that could have turned out differently had I not been afflicted with the bias of my unknown grudge!

I let go of my grudge, very recently actually. I let go of it and could not believe the freedom I felt, and it was when I let it go that I realized I had even been carrying it around all these years. I was smiling again as freely as I could remember doing as a child, and laughing big belly laughs. I no longer felt unsure of how I should react, or act, or what I ought to say or might be the proper way to say it. In that moment of freedom I could fly on the clouds I was so weightless!

The idea of this grudge has made me question the idea of having the power to shape our own lives vs. nothing happening by mistake. If I hold the idea that I have the power to control my life then perhaps I was carrying this grudge around for longer than was necessary or useful, that I could have chosen to let it go sooner and found the great joy that freedom brought with it much earlier.

On the other hand, if there are no mistakes in life then I was meant to carry that grudge up to the very nanosecond I did. I was not meant to feel free of that weight until just the right moment so I could gain the most valuable lesson from it.

Sometimes this is how I view riding horses. When we work to be better riders there are many times that we struggle through the same lesson again and again, we fight against a bad habit or poor coordination. What truth serves us as riders – the idea that we have the power to change ourselves as riders or the idea that there are no mistakes and every challenge or struggle we face is one we are meant to endure to the very last nanosecond?

What if they both do? Perhaps it is that they both serve us at different times and under various circumstances. I don’t see them as being at odds with one another, but having a synergistic effect together. Being consciously aware of how they affect our personal development; not just as riders but in the global aspect of our lives; can be helpful.

Have you ever hurt yourself to the point of bleeding or bruising or even breaking a bone and not realized that your injury hurt until you looked at it? Or what about people who overcome very great challenges that seem impossible, yet they make it look easy? Perhaps they have not looked down to see the bleeding injury or broken bone of an impossible challenge. Often we do not notice the pain, the challenge, even the opportunity and benefits until after the injury has happened or the impossible been made possible.

When I held my grudge I knew I felt anger, felt hurt, felt uncared about. I was not conscious of my part in the situation or that I had the power to communicate how I felt; that I had the power even to simply forgive those feelings and move on. I was not conscious that carrying that weight for so long would shape me into a certain person who was far more capable of appreciating every joyous moment of no longer bearing that weight; and someone who was not only able to forgive that grudge but to feel genuine love, respect and gratefulness towards the person I had begrudged so long.