A Horse-Whispering Kind of Romance

I had a religious experience today.  It’s been two years since I decided to finally do something I’ve dreamed about for ages. Learning to ride a horse. I’d had a couple of Wild West experiences with spirited horses getting the bit between their teeth and running for their lives and for the hell of it, I’m sure, to see if they could dislodge this ridiculously inept and green creature on their backs.

One of them succeeded, god bless her stalwart soul. With the others I fought back. Or rather I clung on, resolving in the heat of the moment never to get on again. But somehow I couldn’t stick to my resolve, and over the years I’ve had a few riding lessons. I’ve never stuck at it, but still, I could never dislodge this dream I had of one day.

You know, having a relationship with a horse. So there I was, two years ago, suddenly saying just do it. So I did. I enrolled at a riding school for a term of lessons, and paid upfront. Lesson one was out of this world, more amazing than anything I’d dreamed of. Sometimes reality does that.

All I did was walk around a muddy patch, and then break into a rising trot. But the thing is, I got it. I got that you don’t ask the horse nicely please will you just do what I ask you to. It’s not about being nice. It’s not about being a control freak or megalomaniac either. It’s just about clear communication. My teacher had said to me that riding isn’t liking driving a car, where you put your foot down and the car just keeps going. With horses, she said, you’re telling them something every single second with your body movements, and they’re getting the message loud and clear. So get clear, she said. Be aware of what you’re doing.

It was quite difficult at first. What am I saying? It was ridiculously impossible. Hard enough to not fall off, let along keep my back straight, my hands relaxed and not too far forward, the reigns not to far anything, thighs tight, feet in the right position. And remember, you’re not just standing, you’re moving.

Oh, and one other thing. Relax. Riiight. As it happens, I had some glorious moments when I got enough of it right for the horse to be able to understand and we had a thing together that horse and I, for a minute or two. Wow. That’s when I understood why I’d lusted after the experience all my life. Must have sensed what it would be like somehow. It’s everything you imagine when you see it in the movies. I only had it for a few seconds at a time and it blew me away.

Fast forward to the next week. I was nervous for no reason I could understand. The last lesson had gone well, my teacher had told me I had a natural feel, the world was my oyster. Alas, my sense of be careful, something bad’s gonna happen was in good working order. My inexperienced teacher hoisted me onto the horse, and when adjusting my stirrups yanked my leg out at an unnatural angle. Ow! The stirrup wasn’t quite right and before I could stop her she did it again.

Tore something up inside. And that was the end of my riding lessons. Fast forward again, shall we, let’s leave out the grisly details. Two years later and I’m almost completely mended. The odd twinge if I sit at my laptop for too long for too many days in a row without doing any exercise.

Over the two years I’ve quite often gone down to a kind of common field in a horsey village where everybody who doesn’t have a big paddock lets their horses hang out. I was pretty scared of them at first, and they didn’t care much for me. Then one day I was feeling so unhappy and I went to hang out with them. Which is code for watch them and wish they’d come and talk to me. One of them came up to the fence and stuck around while I bawled my eyes out. We had a good heart to heart talk. He even nuzzled me now and then.

Since then I haven’t seen him again and none of the other horses ever came up to the fence to say hi or even bother me for food. Until today. I went down again. I’d watched Dream Horse the other night, and it had awoken all my passion. I was actually just going to go to the bank, but that field beckoned me and once I was out the house there was no stopping me.

When I got there, there were a dozen horses, most of them hanging out at the fence! The thing is, I don’t know what to do, really, around horses. Not yet, anyway. The best I could do was greet them and wish I was a horse whisperer. I wondered if they liked being sung to, so I tried that. They didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t get a standing ovation. After a while I stopped trying to draw them to me and just sang to myself and enjoyed their company. At some point one of them came up to the fence. He was quite forward and for some reason it didn’t scare me. He was nudging me all over the place, trying to eat my camera even.

I loved it. But the best, the best, was that after a while I put my forehead against his and stroked him and whispered to him. He stood so still and so did my heart. Every now and then he would move to flick off a fly, but he stayed with me. I stroked him and talked to him. Sometimes he would lift his head and look down his nose at me, then he’d stand still and put his head against mine. And I felt it again. That something between me and a horse.

Eventually somebody came to take him home. His name is Parabola.

No Pedophile Priests, Exploitation, Guns or Corrupt Politicians / Corporations

I was recently asked what I'd do if I was the supreme leader of my country and I had carte blanche. Well, if you're going to fantasize you might as well go the whole hog. So I thought about what I'd do if I was world leader. 

I’d order mammoth research into the drug and psychiatric industries and I’d get rid of all guns. Yes, all guns that shoot real live bullets. Every single last one of them. People could go to counseling if it was traumatic. They’d get over it. I’d get rid of all armaments and shut down all military industrial interests. No more war. Anybody who had a snit about territory or religion or power would have to learn how to debate well. If it was traumatic they could go to counseling. They’d get over it.

  

I'd decree that the Vatican is no longer an independent state, that it is part of Italy and must declare its earnings for the past hundred years. The backtax it would owe would be used to create an organization to provide social security benefits for people who have been demolished by austerity measures, globally. 

The pope and all the bishops around the world would be forced to adhere to their vow of poverty and stripped of all their wealth. They’d all have to take a truth drug so they couldn’t lie. Those assets and that money would be put into a global proactive investigation to unearth all pedophile priests past and present and defrock them, to pay settlements to all legitimate victims who came forward. 

The Vatican would be investigated by a team of the best experts in the world to unearth its connections to the Mafia and other thugs in organized crime. It would be stripped of any excess wealth and some of that money would be used to create organizations in different countries that provided job opportunities at decent salaries, and education for people who needed it to be able to do decent jobs. These benefits and jobs wouldn’t only be for Third World underprivileged but for anybody who has slipped through the cracks.  

Some of the money would go towards counseling organizations so that everybody who wanted it would have a chance to know what it is to get decent parenting, unconditional love and sane, practical guidance and teaching, so they could learn about self esteem and entitlement and how to live the good life.  

Some of the money of course would have to go to preserving the beautiful buildings of the Vatican City. I know, it seems like a waste, but I’m sure there’d be more than enough. If there wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter because the Vatican coffers would be emptied and all the corrupt leaders in the world who are still alive would have to cough up the money they got by abusing their power. Since Berlusconi is still around, there’d be plenty from his bloated fortune. Relatives who are living off fortunes of dead corrupt officials and politicians would have to cough up too. 

Whilst I’m on the subject of corruption, some of the money from corrupt leaders would be used to investigate bankers who would be charged with crimes if they committed them. Their wealth would be added to the pile used to educate and empower people who needed help.  

All corporations that have committed crimes and been able to avoid prosecution, or that have won their cases because of intimidation etc. would be retried and forced to pay huge sums. Those that were prosecuted and convicted but got away with a relative slap on the wrist would have to pay fines and compensation commensurate with the crime and how much they earn. In other words, it would hurt. And the proceeds would be really useful. 

And on the subject of hurting, all the corrupt church, government, corporation people, once they’d been properly tried and had paid their dues, wouldn’t have to go to prison. They’d be set free and if they’d learned anything they’d be left alone, but if they didn’t, they’d miraculously find themselves in dire poverty. They wouldn’t be told that it wouldn’t be forever and all their efforts at pulling themselves out of it would be blocked. In other words, they’d know the humiliation and pain of being disempowered unfairly. 

Remorse and a desire to change would be the key to them being offered counseling and assistance. Would I make sure there was intervention for anybody who looked like they were ready to commit suicide? I wish I was nasty and vindictive enough to say no, but alas I’m not. Yeah, yeah, there’d be intervention.

Imagine a world with no guns, no pedophile priests, no super-wealthy corrupt Vatican, politicians or corporations. Not because they’d been stripped of their power with one wave of my hypothetical and utterly fantastical wand, but because we’re all so conscious of our rights and our worth that we didn’t let anybody get away with exploiting us in any area of life. That’s a world I look forward to.

ADHD Drugs and Mis-diagnosis Cause 24 Year Old to Hang Himself

I’ve always wondered about ADHD, and how easily doctors prescribe medication for it. I’ve never believed it’s a viable solution, any more than I believe anti-depressants work to solve the problem of depression. They don’t, they simply anaesthetize emotions – which people often believe is the core problem because they’re uncomfortable.  

They’re not, though, they’re only symptoms that something needs to be attended to. If a person is depressed, it’s got a whole lot to do with how they’re living, their relationship with themselves and those around them, their inability to know their own value and rights, their social skills, their inability to trust and receive love and walk away from people who aren’t treating them with love and respect. 

The depression has also got a whole lot to do with suppressing emotions – but it’s only because doing so means they can’t get to the cause of the problem. By the by, one of the results of repressed emotions and unmet needs is inability to concentrate. There are four choices: do nothing; seek therapeutic or counseling help so you can learn that you do have value and how to take a stand against people who don’t respect you and all the messages in your head that tell you you’re worthless; take anti-depressants; or commit suicide.

In life it seems to me that five things are guaranteed. We’re born, we die, we can’t alter the law of cause and effect, symptoms have a purpose and if they’re ignored the problem doesn’t get solved, and nothing stays the same so if it isn’t getting better it’s getting worse.  

Logic tells me that if the things I believe about myself, my self esteem and entitlement and my environment and the way I respond to it are the essential cause of my depression, unless I change them, nothing can get better. Taking anti-depressants makes it easy for me to stay where I am, because I can’t feel those uncomfortable emotions. So I continue being disempowered. And that means things can only get worse.

Of course I don’t see it because I’m drugged out of my mind, but it takes its toll nonetheless and one day even the drug can’t hide that toll. By then I’m addicted, either physically or psychologically and my body is damaged often irreparably. Getting back to ADHD, I think it’s most likely to be a symptom directly related to the quality of nurturing and understanding a child receives and the emotional health of its family environment.

It kills me when parents let doctors prescribe drugs for their children. Imagine the soul of a child frantic for some kind of nurturing input that it isn’t getting and desperately needs – but can’t articulate. Instead of getting what it needs it gets drugged down. Now there’s a real solution for you. 

One of the problems is that adults don’t realize how sensitive children really are and how easily they’re traumatized. How easily they’re conditioned to not speak out, to not articulate when something is wrong. Plus, we’re a society that’s been so conditioned by a prescription drug industry remorseless about exploiting how hard it is to really grapple with the things that bother us in life, and how scary emotions are if you don’t know what to do with them.   

On Feb. 03 2013 nytimes.com ran an article about Richard Fee, a 24-year old from Virginia Beach. His doctor, from Dominian Psychiatric Associates, diagnosed ADHD, despite that Richard had never had it in childhood. He prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication. Richard’s mother pleaded with her son to stop the medication when she was sure he was becoming addicted. She was also sure he didn’t have ADHD.  

Richard wasn’t able to hear her, and became violently delusional. He was put in a psychiatric hospital. As if that isn’t horrific enough, his doctor prescribed another 90 days of Adderall. Richard hanged himself two weeks after the prescription ended. We see stories like this in the movies and think it doesn’t really happen in real life. Yes it does.

ADHD – and depression – could be caused by underlying stress in the home that isn’t being acknowledged by parents who don’t know how to deal with it, or by all the things a child or an adult doesn’t know how to do, or all the misbegotten beliefs that control their actions and the way they relate to people and themselves, or the way they deal - or don’t - with emotions. Humans are complex and our needs are myriad. We’re so unconscious of most of them, which is why we have uncomfortable emotions; they wake us up. 

The thing is; whatever we don’t know can be learned at any age, and whatever we lack can be corrected. It doesn’t matter whether we’re a child or an adult. When that happens, the depression is resolved and the triumph is phenomenal. When people are disturbed about something they can’t concentrate. If it’s so in adults, why would it be any different in children? So instead of prescribing medication for the child, maybe the parents need to seek counseling.

Drugs don’t fix depression and I don’t believe they do anything for ADHD. They either procrastinate on the inevitable crisis that’s caused by living in a disempowered way, or they lead to addiction and getting trapped in a nightmare of psychiatric misdiagnoses. Are depression and ADHD purely a chemical imbalance? Or is the chemical imbalance caused by something that’s treatable and accessible and has nothing to do with science and pills but everything to do with the complexity of what human beings – adults and children - need to be able to live balanced, healthy lives? 

One thing I know; giving a person nurturing which includes unconditional love and really good, sane, guidance, for as long as they need it, never led to them being violently delusional and hanging themselves. Rest in peace, Richard Fee. My heart goes out to his family.

Connecticut Shooting – Without Love & Connection We Fragment

Last night I watched various anchors and reporters talking about the terrible shooting in Connecticut.  I was struck by the puzzlement that it had happened, and how much at a loss many were to explain the why of it. A neighbor was interviewed and she said the shooter had seemed a normal young man, and so had his mother. Nobody noticed anything amiss. 

But looking at her I saw a kind of inner dessication from emotional deprivation. Her comment made me think of how often people commit suicide and families and friends say afterwards that there were no signs of distress. I never believe that. I think we’ve either lost or we’ve never developed the capacity to see the reality of a person through the mask that our society teaches us to develop. 

The mask that families, friends and communities require us to keep in place, because who the hell really wants to hear? When you’re happy the world smiles with you. When you’re depressed or sad or scared everybody scatters or tries to force upon you the importance of a positive attitude. The tension that builds up inside gets unbearable, and eventually something pops. 

One of the anchors commented on the possibility that the young man was depressed and added “it may seem surprising that a depressed person would do something this violent”. I stared, flabbergasted. Depressed people are the ones who pop; doesn’t everybody know that? People get depressed because they’re not getting the love and respect they need. It’s that simple.

Nobody sees them and they’re forced in all sorts of ways to suppress their needs even more and over-adapt. Which is anathema to the spirit; we’re not built to suppress and be deprived, we’re built to experience love and connection and express ourselves creatively. A young man whose mother doesn’t have a clue about unconditional love has learnt from birth that he has no value. He hasn’t developed social skills so he can’t get the love he needs from community.

The mistake we make too often is in thinking that if children are ‘well behaved’ it means they’re happy. Ditto adults. Often they’re only that way because it’s the only way they’ll either get positive attention from us or avoid abuse. As a society it hasn’t sunk in yet how violent the anger is of the unheard child and how we store it well into adulthood. The kind of violence that is as powerful as the instinct to kill if your life is being threatened.

When the need for love continues to be ignored and the ange gets suppressed time after time after time, the result is depression. You don’t fix depression with positive thinking. You don’t fix it with medication either. You numb the symptoms is all. The emotions, which are the result of the non-nurturing environment you live in, keep on building, you just don’t know it. Some part of you carries on feeling beyond your awareness. 

If the need for love and touch and connection and to just be heard, is strong enough, the pain of being constantly discounted can become so unendurable that it breaks through your anaesthesia, whether it’s medication or distraction-induced. If you have no social skills, no understanding of what’s happening to and within you; if you’ve never had positive loving input, you have no frame of reference about moderate behaviour.

The moderating part of your brain hasn’t been developed at all. So when the pain reaches that intensity, you’re in fight or flight mode. In your world, your perception, the information you run off in your head, you have only one option. If you’ve been exposed to way too much killing in your entertainment, and guns are easy to get, why on earth would you choose any other outlet?   

“Give me liberty or give me death.” How often do shooters massacre others then turn the gun on themselves?  Incidents like this take us by surprise only because we don’t have an accurate idea on how massive our need for real, unconditional love is. And how not getting it violates us and presses that survival button in a way that no amount of suppression and unhealthy social conditioning can do anything about.  

We look on this young man and think he’s a mutant of our society. But is he? I don’t think so. I think he’s the ultimate illustration of how lousy we are at facing our inner reality, how much we do everything we can to avoid our needs, how vulnerable we actually are, how good we are at over-adapting in ways that often make life unbearable for us at some level. And how much pressure we put on those around us to do the same.

Life is hard, its lessons heart-wrenching. Innocent children and beautiful-spirited adults who had so much love to give, so much life to experience, have paid for society’s unconsciousness. May those who died rest in peace. May those who survived find the love and support they need. May we all work towards being more truthful about what we really need, and wake up to how desperate some people around us are for love.