Herd Instinct: We can venture to the other side of the fence
The horses were bunched up together along the high side of the pasture, grazing nose to tail, swatting flies from each other’s eyes and noses. My brother and I had come to separate a two-year-old from the bunch. I was to begin a rite of passage, “breaking” my own horse. We were both young, me about 12, and she just over two. My brother, already an expert horse whisperer, knew the excitement I was feeling.
“We’ll spend most of the summer just getting to know each other in the corral,” he said. “Before you put the saddle on, you’ll be best friends.”
Just then my job was to stay as still as possible until he got her into the portable corral. I watched him ambling his horse towards the bunch gently, trying to avoid suspicion. The horses stayed mostly quiet but watchful, ears pricked forward, ready to spring at any human foolishness. Tim got my little filly to the fringes of the herd, and it looked like he’d be able to hug her along the fence and nudge her right through the corral gate.
About halfway through the quarter-mile journey, she started to worry, turning her head, then neck, and finally direction back toward the herd. I watched as the minutes unfolded, and Tim and “Banjo,” as I decided to call her, danced with quickening pace, him gently peeling her out of the herd, her sprinting back, ears down, determined to stay in her safe space. Tim finally succeeded in getting a loose rope over her neck and prodding her into the corral. And when I let my breath out, I realized I had been rooting for her during every escape attempt.
My instinct was just like hers: the herd is a good place.
I think about this often, this simple metaphor for how our heads and hearts sever from each other, making it impossible for us to get the outcomes we plan or hope for. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to spend the summer with Banjo, befriending her, giving her extra oats, showing the ranch hands that I, too, was capable of whispering to horses. And yet, watching her agony at the prospect of being culled, my body tensed, my gut hollowed. I had no notion or awareness that I was rooting for her, against my own interests.
This dance plays out countless times each day, with every unconscious breath we take. Without awareness, we’re simply victims to our own emotions, and acting from that frame of mind usually results in getting what we think we want, only to figure out we don’t want that at all. My head wanted that filly in the trailer at nearly any cost, so great was my thirst to have my very own first horse, but my heart would have had her return to her heart’s desire one hundred percent of the time. The stakes were insignificant in this case – we can all agree about that – to everyone but her and me. But the blind desire to return to the herd, over and over again, plays out in meetings and during discussions and on mountain passes all the time, often to the detriment of the individuals and the whole.
It is true that there is safety and security in the herd, and these are basic desires of every human, every creature. By yardstick, they are basic rights. It is also true that discovery, inspiration, even the ability to understand things beyond the familiar are possible only when one develops the mental stamina to go beyond the herd. This is the work of our society: to pioneer the mental frontier in ways that allow us to maintain our own security while venturing forth to understand the view from the other side of the fence.
With gratitude,
Sara
Becoming Jackson Whole is rounding the bend on its second 21 Day Mindfulness Challenge. If you are one of the 1,000 people who signed up for this, you are part of a herd of mental pioneers. Imagine what is possible as we all become stronger, together.