Sometimes the things we are pretty sure will be unpleasant turn out to be really fun, and sometimes we find out we can handle way more than we thought we could. These are the life lessons I re-learned yesterday. I find that I re-learn life lessons all the time. Such as: the thing you are dreading really won’t be as bad as you think it will be. Or as James Herriot (one of my favorite authors) wrote, “The fear is always worse than the reality.” Or, as the Germans say, “Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked.” However you like to say it, the lesson applied to me yesterday when we had our big inspection at the barn.
I won’t bore you with the details of how much hard work and stress was involved in organizing, cleaning, and presenting a herd of horses for a big important breed inspection, so use your imagination. Not to toot my own horn, but I will tell you that my crew and I handled the would-be chaos with a kind of ferocious proficiency. And the part I was dreading the most turned out to be incredibly fun and really rewarding. I rode two three-year-olds for their performance tests. I followed my plan and had a great time. My plan, by the way, was to avoid a panic freeze by conciously addressing different parts of my body and reminding them what their job was, and to really ride, not just sit there and hope for the best. I was in my element, after all, and I knew exactly what needed to be done. There was no part of it that I couldn’t handle (that’s one of my favorite encouraging phrases I tell myself: “Break it down, there is no part of this that you can’t handle").
And voila! All was well. Being in the spotlight doesn’t necessarily equal embarassment and horror after all (a shocking revelation for me, sad but true). I rode my horses and they were splendid, even though there was all manner of scariness to distract them in and around the arena: an audience, a dude on a ladder with a camera, loudspeakers, a tent, and a kindly Swedish judge, who, in my mind, may very well have been a heavily-armed, barely restrained, edge-of-insanity-taste-for-human-flesh sort of predator who wanted nothing more than to put a messy end to my existence. But as I said, all went well, and people clapped at the end when that kindly judge declared the horses to be pleasant and acceptable for their age. People clapped. For me. Do you know how often I put myself in a position to allow that sort of thing to happen? Its been years, probably, and I’m not going to lie, I was grinning like an idiot.
But the fun didn’t end there, oh no. Remember what I said earlier about how we can handle way more than we think we can? I was thoroughly done in at the end of the day. I had been at work for over twelve hours, it had been a long hard work week, and all I wanted to do was go home, fix myself a grilled-cheese sandwich, and fall into my comfy bed. I had earned that. But the majority of people, it seems, prefer to party as a means of post-stress relaxation. This will never make sense to me. But I agreed to attend the After-Inspection Party because my desire to collapse was overruled by my desire to not be perceived as rude. All week I had been thinking, This is more than I can handle! And obviously each time that just wasn’t true, so one more time I decided to push my limits and attend the gathering and hope against hope that I didn’t snap.
I went home, showered, and arrived in time for wonderful food and some lovely conversations. Then the wine took effect. Not on me, I wasn’t drinking wine on this particular evening, but at a certain point everyone else got realllly happy. Riders and trainers and owners and auditors and those Swedish judges, the ones that had seemed stern and professional before, were suddenly my best friends. At one point I kid you not we were all standing in our chairs with on foot up on the table, glasses raised, while a raucus Swedish song rang into the night.
Later on I was chatting with one of the judges, and the subject came up, unavoidably, that I’m from back east, originally. He tried for five minutes to convey something to me about a nearby area before I finally realized he was talking about New Jersey. He took my braid in his hand and laughingly said, “You are not blonde, why can’t you understand what I’m saying?” My response was a light appology and a reference to the late hour. I didn’t add that the combination of the general volume in the room, the drunken slur of his speech, and his Swedish inability to pronounce his ‘J’s made him thoroughly impossible to understand.
I had a grand time though. People influenced by alcohol can become very generous. It was implied throughout the evening by various folk that I was delightful, professional, efficient, quick, smart, and a very good rider. Its fun to watch people tell stories in a language I don’t understand, and Swedes tell highly-amusing stories (apparently). So a sucessful day and a fun evening drew to an end with hugs and well-wishes, and I learned not to underestimate my level of tolerance, or the ability of workmates to make my life just that much more enjoyable. It felt great to be part of a team this week.
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