Mind Games

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” -Rumi

There was a horse, Jack, at Turner Farm (pictured above) who could be such a pain to work with some days. He should’ve been one of the best in the herd - a middle aged gelding in good physical condition - he should’ve led the hitch. But instead he would wait until the other horse started moving and then would jump in, because starting the load is difficult. He was often leaving senior horses to get things rolling. It all came to a head one day in Spring. We were scheduled to spread compost ahead of a corn planting. After we finally got the team walking out with the spreader as soon as we crossed the threshold into the field he would freeze. Nothing had changed. The spreader didn’t magically get overloaded with compost, the field was solid footing, there was no boogeyman lying in wait. It was all mental. We had crossed the faint sod line that said we were beginning our “real work”. And those are the hardest problems to untangle. There is no gadget or expensive supplement you can buy to get you out. There’s no new command you can teach to breakthrough into clarity. We ended up unhitching and switching him for a different animal so that we could get the job done, and I needed to go back to the drawing board on how to tackle this issue. We triple checked his harness fit and his physical condition. We put him on a supplement for non-sweaters called One AC just to make sure there were zero physical contributing factors. Over the next six months things did improve. I hitched him with our best horse and had them pull a sled. If Jack froze, or bulked at the start, his partner just kept moving and pulling him along. Jack pretty quickly improved on most days on most pieces of equipment. By the time we were spreading compost that Fall if I kept my voice soft, and gave him just a little encouragement at the beginning of the field they’d generally move right along. When we did get “stuck” I would pause, take a breath, and then ask them to go. If they didn’t both move out together I’d stop them, wait, and ask again until they finally stepped out as a team. But again, the load hadn’t changed, in fact, it gets lighter as they go and the spreader empties. But in Jack’s world it was a significant distinction, and it took hundreds of rounds of incremental progress to begin to reshape this habit. I’m convinced that most of our work has more to do with recognizing these mind games than anything else. Where are the imaginary lines I’ve drawn that make me bulk at the work? Who is my partner, are they right for me? When are we actually working against each other - staying stuck - instead of moving forward? If I’ve tried pressure, noise and intensity, and it hasn’t gotten me where I want, is there another option? There likely won’t ever be a day circled on the calendar when all of this is solved. But maybe in six months there will be progress, maybe in a few years it’ll be a whittled down to a single intake of breath, or the smallest pause - one foot suspended in the air - undetected by anyone who wouldn’t know to watch for it. The work goes on, each round held in the mind before you arrive, as perfection, and each one coming just that much closer.