Committed

A long time ago a good friend of mine, a person who was a bit of a mentor really, cornered me and asked me a lot of hard questions about where I was going with my life, who I thought I was, what I intended to do with my potential and what I was really passionate about. At 21, I didn't have answers that really satisfied either of us and it all turned into a bit of a mess because I didn't know how to react other than by getting defensive.

Still, I learned something that I didn't grasp immediately then but came to understand as the years went by. What I was told by this older and wiser person about life (and about myself) was this: You can say you love all you want, but without commitment you don't really love anything.

True love should put you into a place where you constantly examine and evaluate yourself and your contribution to your beloved. What can I do better? What do I have to give? What does he/she/it need? How can I serve? Am I willing? This can be about anything, from the romantic (a lover, a spouse) to the specific (a goal, a cherished dream), and many things in between.

In some ways, I think negotiating this sort of emotional terrain is easier for people with kids. Having a child sorts things out for people rather tidily, or at least it appears to from where I'm sitting. Sure, you parents probably still have loads of doubt in relation to yourself and your interactions with the kid(s) and all the rest, but you know (or you ought to) that you are absolutely there for them.

In that commitment, in that willingness to serve, you meet yourself and you learn quickly that there isn't so much time left for you and your ego and your half-assed ideas. People, your people - the ones you created - need to be fed and changed and cared for and loved. There's no real philosophy about it, it's just getting shit done with as light a heart as possible.

You can read books, you can go to classes, you can commune with others in a similar situation but, at the end of the day, what you really must do is greater than the sum of any and all of your intellectualizing. It's not that you don't think, it's that what's more important is just doing. Your theories need to wait until your practice is through because somebody is hungry, has a cold, needs a hug, etc.

My joke about having kids is always that I come from a line that no breeder would, in good conscience, pursue and I knew about the same time as my well-meaning friend was giving me the gears about finding and following my passion that I wasn't going to have kids.

An interesting and unexpected off-shoot of my getting back into horses was the dawning of the notion that maybe I still needed to have children, just not the conventional human type. I realized that I craved that same kind of devotion and servitude in my life and that I could offer it most sincerely and honestly to horses.