Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

We Will Make Mistakes

About the Book

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. -Franklin D. Roosevelt

I sometimes feel like a fraud for what I have written in these pages. I know that, despite my best efforts, I do not live every moment of every day in the way that I desire. I begin to attack myself for not being good enough, not being truthful, as though my failures mean that everything else is a lie. As though one unconscious action should condemn me. In these moments it is hard to see the value. It is also easy to want to give up, to label myself a failure and quit on the process altogether.

These doubts tend to arise in the midst of another crisis. They creep up after a long week, when I am too tired to defend myself against them. They stalk me when a drama occurs and I am too distracted to see them coming. They circle in packs, joining in the hunt when other fears have already begun to strike me lame. They pounce when I have let myself become separate from others and am trying to limp through life without the support of my herd.

I think this is the way fears approach us in all of our lives. They don't attack us in the bright daylight of those moments we are living on the path of love. They wait for the darkness, when we invite them in through our own negative image of our self. We open the doors through self-doubt, self-mockery, self-hatred. They pile on, grabbing all the holds we have created for them through self-flagellation, and keep coming as long as we let them.

As President Roosevelt said, these fears are nameless, unreasoning, and unjustified. At first, this can make them seem even scarier. As humans, we have evolved the capacity to name, to rationalize, and to justify. When we are confronted with something that has not be named, not been reasoned, we fear it, because it if outside of our every day understanding of the world.

Thus, in the moment we are confronted with a simple, nameless fear, we give it form in an attempt to better understand it. However, in rationalizing our fears this way, we often give them more power over us and less ability to let them go. The feeling of fear arises, and we instantly jump to labeling it. We feel the longer it remains un-named, the more it can harm us. But by jumping to the rationalization, we often mis-label the fear. The easiest fears to feel are those beliefs we have about our own weaknesses, so they are also the ways we tend to label new feelings of fear as they arise. Thus, our fears strengthen our self-condemnation. This is unjustified, and harms us greatly.

This self-condemnation is what we should truly be ware of. Each time we succumb to the fear, each time we shy away and hide or lash out without thought, we put a shackle on ourselves. Through these shackles we paralyze ourselves, creating the feeling that we are powerless in the world. To regain our freedom, we must be willing to allow our mistakes without blame, disapproval, or guilt. We must be willing to sit with our nameless fear for a moment, feel it deeply, and understand where it is coming from, before giving it a name. In so doing, we stop the cycle of unconsciously piling blame and hate on ourselves.

This is not to say we should not question ourselves or try to do better in the future. It is not to say that we should be proud when we have acted unkindly or boastful when we have lied. But, by the flip side of the same coin, we should also forgive ourselves our transgressions. Forgiveness does not have to imply that we condone what we did. It simply acknowledges that we are human, that we will make mistakes, and that we deserve to give ourselves the opportunity to do it differently next time. Otherwise our lives will grow continually smaller as we condemn ourselves over and over again.

Each time we pass on the opportunity to forgive ourselves, we mortar a brick into the wall of a prison cell of our own creation, but each forgiveness allows us to pry a brick from the wall. These openings let the light of the world shine into our lives, dissolving the shadows of fear. The light halts our fear-induced retreat from the world, and allows us to advance once again, stepping onto the path of openness and love.

When we are on this path, we understand that we will make mistakes. We will trip and fall from time to time. But the fact that we have stumbled does not mean that we must condemn ourselves to living the rest of our lives laying in the mud. This is the reasoning of fear. On the contrary, when we fall is when we must brush off our wounds, give ourselves a hug, stand back up, and begin walking again.