Judy’s Note: This article is written by one of my very special students named Rebecca Mullet. I hope it helps you to see thru the eyes of a student as they experience Milestone Farm. This was one of her pages in her senior project.
Eventing and Me
A famous philosopher, who Victor Frankl formed his beliefs on, Friedrich Nietzsche once said he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how, eventing has given me that why. There is no greater feeling than the sun pouring onto your skin and your soul exploding as you hear the countdown, three, two, one.have a nice ride, and then your off. To feel the horses body beneath your own, imploding our souls as one and using all strength to have that push to take off and soar. That constant rhythm, flying over jumps, flying past the crowd into the deep as the crowd only sees my blonde hair and shiny silver horse shoes fade in the dust of speed and dedication we have created into the distance. Every obstacle is different, just like every question, problem, and experience in life is, each and every one is new, a creation within itself and it forces you to look deep inside and react.
Through the course, it is like the a journey through life itself, based with different questions faced by you not only physically but mentally as well, requiring ones complete existence to think and feel. Clearing each jump and beginning your fastest gallop gives a blast of adrenalin to your body, as the feeling of uncontrolled freedom starts to take hold of you. Like a drug taking over your body, this feeling fills you and then you explode as the harmony of horse and rider combines and life seems conquerable and full throttle is the only way to approach it. As your soul leaps with the horse, you feel the earth beneath you as one, and then you take flight and release from the world and are truly soaring. You are truly free. Eventing gives me this freedom, this feeling of outrageous courage and heart, facing obstacles that could be life threatening but looking past that, looking into the world and seeing yourself, pure for the first time. The feeling of being released, naked in the sun and just you, and your force of forward motion cannot be stopped, being unstoppable. In the allegory of the cave it is said that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already, one just has to unlock that power to learn by wanting to. Eventing unlocked that want for me. All eventers can tell you that eventing is a lifestyle, not a job filled with long hours and hard work, its never ending and its the same with the lessons embedded in it (Warmblood Today Mag. Pg18).
Your knowledge and experiences in eventing itself will never cease to begin; you will continue to find new adventures, knowledge and overall enlightenment in eventing. Each step taken with a horse, if your one the ground, galloping in the fields, showing at your first three star or soaring over the huge log on the cross country course, each step is another lesson. You can ask any eventer, everyones beginning was hard, and the sport itself is a triathlon with animals five times the size of you. The thing that most eventers wont tell you, but that all of them know is that each and ever one of them had a rough beginning because it opened there eyes to a brand new world. Eventing is a world of adventure that challenged one to think mentally and react physically, to questions one lifestyle, and how they can make it better, because one cannot improve a horse if they do not improve themselves first.
Eventing has brought meaning to my life, in helping me find who I am and why I was put here on this planet and realize that everything happens for a reason. The determining factor of these happenings is how we handle them and what step or choice we make next. Eventing has opened my eyes, just like the people in the cave from the Allegory of the Cave story; Socrates describes the people in the cave as sheltered in a life that only consists of shadows and no real truth or reality at all. That is the life I lived until eventing opened my eyes to the sun and I could feel that pain of knowledge entering me.
My first lesson with Judy ended in tears and to the entire revelation that I knew nothing. It was hard to admit that I knew nothing, after coming from a barn in which I was the best rider there, and I was that go-to-girl whenever someone had a question my expertise could answer. It was painful being at a new barn, without any of my friends with a new horse I didnt know very well, and the feeling of loneliness and utter ignorance. This was all very painful for me to under go and I found myself thinking of my horse that died a couple months before. Thankfully I didnt stop riding, I didnt quite know what it was, but I had this drive, this dedication that was always distilled in my mind and whenever faced with a problem I took the initiative, even if it was the wrong one. I continued to learn the ways of the eventers, and how the sport worked.
Dressage was the hardest section for me to learn because it required body and mind awareness, as well as clarity of your decisions. This was vital to eventing because the horse was controlled by your body and any tense of your body my horse could feel it. Then the lesson would end it a speeding horse and me crying on top doing nothing. Dressage is what makes the horse listen and be in tune to the rider, and if one didnt have that, that is when cross country and show jumping would get dangerous. Then if that happened it was like the blind leading the blind. After getting stronger, undergoing mass reconstruction of my mind and body, I came to the ultimate lesson of eventing, to keep moving forward. Some asked why? And I certainly did, but in a way I knew deep down, just like those seeking enlightenment do. The feeling that there is something better, something completely life changing out there, a feeling that no one can really describe except by using the word of free. I wanted to move forward and keep learning so that I could find that free, that free in my life that would make me unstoppable and always moving forward to go into the world and myself without fear.
After the second year of eventing, Olly, my horse, and I started advancing and it felt as if the reconstruction was finally on the right track, like I was finally finding myself, my passion and my life. Eventing from that moment on became the epitome of my life; I started making connections of life experiences and problems to eventing techniques and difficulties faced in training. Eventing requires a person to not only be athletic and aware, but have the mentality of being centered, optimistic outlook on the worst of things and the most important positive or otherwise known as forward. If one has a negative outlook on life and has not found that enlightenment, the are still chained to the world, and looking down on life reflects exactly where your going to end up. Through this concept I found self actualization, and found who I was and why I was put here on this planet and what my meaning was. To move forward, to become enlightened and be truly free, and to find life in the essence that I was supposed to find it. Find myself in it all, and then my purpose on earth is to help spread this enlightenment to those that maybe dont have the courage to tap into that kind of overwhelming freedom or are controlled by life and cant.
Olympian Will Faudree told me at his clinic last January that if you ever want to move forward and get over the jump without falling and breaking your tibia (like the woman in the lesson before me) you have to make a commitment to yourself and to your horse to be forward. Once you have done that go for it and make it yours. Eventing has made me change my life and become enlightened in more ways I can explain. In my soul I know that everyone can make this change, get over these jumps, they just have to make that commitment to be forward and go.
