Empowered

In this time of the world, many of us have far more resources than the average person ever had. We not only have access to basic needs, but therapy, information, and things that can give us a high quality of life: not just healthy and well fed but well read and rounded.

And yet, in this age of information, it has become popularized to take this widespread information and understanding and use it as a limitation, instead of a stepping stone forward - instead of understanding our situations, our uniqueness, and having more insight into our inner why's - we see all around us that being "moral" and "ethical" means a small, disempowering and disengenuine world of "I can't."

This is extremely prevalent in the horse world. A well meaning desire to understand horses minds and needs has lead many to back away at the first sign of trouble, to list every sign of education and growth as morally affable and to create nervous, neurotic horses who struggle with life.

It seems the middle is so much farther away to us now - we have access to information, but so many of us are paralyzed with fear, guilt and shame - so many getting out of horses completely due to concern over everything being wrong.

A woman once asked me how I knew it was even ok to ride my horses with everything I knew about movement and anatomy - and I said, all I know is I have a field full of horses that once were lame and miserable, and now they are all sound and confident.

We can make a choice to make our worlds smaller, to use all the information around us to disempower ourselves and build a world of "I can't,"s

or we can use what information was intended for, and develop it into experience and knowledge. Learn how your unique mind works and develop it to its full unique potential. Learn how your life circumstances limit you and do your best with what you can - seek help, look for unique paths, do what you have to with the fire in your heart. And learn everything about your horse that you can, and then go forward and create something.

And for the love of life and everything in it, don't waste your time with people and teachers who make you feel guilty for breathing - look at what they've accomplished with the horses and people around them and decide if that's what you want too, then go forward and do it with the resources at your fingertips.

Be yourself - be fully empowered with who you are, and leave the moral ambiguity and guilt alone.