After taking a break from learning English riding, I decided to find a new trainer and barn. I have become rather successful at being a passenger on a horse and I’d like to become a rider.

And so that is how I find myself in a new barn and in front of Marbles’ stall.

She is tall, at the back of her stall, standing like a statue, eyeing me up, possibly deciding how she’d like our hour together to turn out.

If I’ve learned anything with horses, it’s to just be, just go about being me while ignoring my ride. I proceed with that in mind, putting my boot and helmet bags on the ground. Unzip my boot bag, take out the left boot, unbuckle, unzip the back, gracefully remove my right foot from my Chelsea boots and try jamming my right foot into my left riding boot.

Sigh.

“That’s not right,” I say out loud to no one and as I stand up, I see my audience, Marbles who now at the front of her stall with her head jammed up against the stall bars, is quietly and curiously looking down at this “idiot passenger struggling with her own two feet!”

“I know how to handle HER,” I imagine Marbles thinking, “I’ll get to do plenty of standing around along with some Sunday morning meanderings while this lady struggles, huffing and puffing to get me to MOVE. This is gonna be FUN!”

And my imaginings are not wrong, Marbles does a fair amount of standing around in the riding ring with me on her back. She also manages to maintain a meandering Sunday morning walk/trot, all the while with me huffing, puffing and out of breath attempting to motivate this thousand pound horse beneath me to MOVE!

What.Am.I.Doing!

Why.Am.I.Attempting.This.Insanity!

I do it because it is the one place on earth that I find I am forced to face so much about myself.

Forced to recon with my constant inside thinking and my love of that constant inside thinking. My lack of clear goals and action. My mindset. My emotional state. My fear of disappointment. My fear of failure. My lack of perfection. My desire to be of value and my utter failure it my attempts.

Being on a school horse who has seen it all and knows how to be in control; a trainer on the ground who has agreed to give me the hard truths; it is a humbling place to be. It somehow feels safe and I am voluntarily there to practise mindset, have eyes that are alive and find my value, whatever that might be.