Living Insanity

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Doris Lessing

When I read this quote, it stopped me cold. “Yes!” I thought. “That’s EXACTLY it!!” I’ve always known this truth at my core, but have never been able to express it this plainly. Lessing means that when one ceases to feel delight at the simplest things, like warmth of the sun on the skin, insanity is taking over. She doesn’t mean the type of insanity exhibited by someone shooting innocent bystanders at a dance club, or spraying bullets at an employee meeting in a Walmart (two mass killings that have happened in only the past two weeks). Lessing refers to insanity that is more indolent and widespread: it is the kind we can fall into gradually as we live our daily lives. It is a mass form of hypnosis during which gratitude, wonder, and flow take a back seat to envy, worry, and strife. Eventually, this form of insanity decays into what Thoreau called “a life of quiet desperation.” It is, in fact, the opposite of feeling the “delight to stand upright.”

I fall prey to such insanity most days, when I wake up and rush headlong into the trap of my reeling, wandering mind. Almost the instant my eyes open, I start judging – mostly myself – as I review all I left undone yesterday, the ways I have fallen short, and the strategies I will use to bail water from my leaky boat of a life. It’s a most comfortable place for me to live, where the to-do list never ends, and the judgment never stops. If I run out of self-judgment, I just turn to judging the ones closest to me. “After all,” I tell myself, “if so-and-so hadn’t done such-and such, life would suck less!”

Days lived this way turn merge into decades; and it begins to feel absolutely normal to let each day pass without gratitude, deep love, and connection to being. I fall into a spiritual coma, until something (or someone) jolts me awake. These breakthroughs of consciousness are rare; in fact, for one who lives disconnected and distracted, moments in which life comes alive are almost too much to bear. The easiest thing to do when I feel the teeming, intensity of life around me is to retreat back to the familiar zombie zone of apathy.

But the older I get, the more convinced I become that cultivating, with purpose and gentleness, these rare seconds of awakeness, is the only thing that matters. It is at these times that God speaks to us – that we see through the thick wall of human self-importance – to the truth that makes us feel whole again.

Horsing Around

About a year ago, my wife Jill dragged me kicking and screaming into the money pit that is horse ownership. She had always wanted a horse, and she fell in love with a handsome Rocky Mountain gelding named Trooper. We rented a stall at a nearby stable since we didn’t have a fenced area for him on our land. Several months, and through back-breaking labor, we had fenced several acres and built a barn. Trooper was now ready to come home. But there was one problem… horses are herd animals. So I set out trying to find Trooper a companion. Craigslist can be dangerous to the uninitiated, and it didn’t take me long to find a black Tennessee walker gelding in nearby Knoxville. I know next to nothing about horses, but the price was right, so I made the two hour road trip one rainy spring afternoon. Arriving at a shabby wooden barn that looked like it could collapse on our heads at any moment, I knew that the two older guys that greeted me were not like the reputable horse owners that we had purchased Trooper from. They handled their horses roughly, using leather straps instead of the gentle urging I had seen with Trooper’s prior owner. I asked for paperwork on the black horse and got a quizzical look. “Paperwork?” said Mike, the younger of the two sketchy looking horse traders. Even to my novice eyes, the black gelding seemed: 1. much older than described and 2. sick with a hacking cough. I told Mike I was moving on.

As I started to get back in my pickup, another horse in their fenced pasture caught my eye. She was taller, with a long-legged stride, and had a beautiful orange-red coat all over except for a white streak between her eyes. While the black gelding was lethargic and, for lack of a better word, droopy, this other horse moved quickly. I said to the owner, “What about that one?” pointing to the red horse. “That one,” he said, “is broke, broke.” (This means, in horse talk, that she is very tame) “But she’s more expensive.” “Of course she is,” I thought to myself. Critical mistake: I should not have acted that interested. I walked up to the fence and the red horse strode up to me confidently with her ears cocked up. She nibbled at my hand and fluttered her long eyelashes at me, and it was over. “I’ll take this one,” I told the owner. I had no idea what I was doing, but this big girl had just chosen me. As we started to load my newfound friend into the trailer, I noticed another horse… a much smaller, dark brown pony with a jet black mane, raising hell in the pasture. She paced back and forth along the fence, whinnying angrily. “What’s up with that one?” I asked Mike. “Well, these two are a pair. They have been together for ten years, and they don’t like being separated.” To this day, I am not sure if any of that was true. But I couldn’t watch the distress of the little horse any more. “How much for both?” I asked. On the drive home, I called my wife. “We now own three horses, Love.” She wasn’t surprised.

I pulled up to the stable that would be their home for the next few weeks. Jen, the stable manager, gave the horses a look over and said, “You bought a red mare, huh? You should stay off of Craiglist.”

Etherea Moves In

Apparently, ginger mares have a reputation for hotheadedness. I may have bitten off too much to chew. But Mike, if that was his real name, did not have a return policy. So two more horses joined our family.

Over next few months, I educated myself about horse care, reading every book I could find, watching youtube videos, and taking riding lessons. For some reason, these 1000lb animals that could crush me at will did not scare me. So each of my days went something like this:

1. Get up early and start batting away at all the things I had to do to make money and organize my life

2. Go to the stable and tend to the horses

3. Get on with the rest of my busy day

One of the first things I learned was that the horses did not respond well to my frenetic and anxious demeanor. My horse-keeping stops were usually on way to some other errand. Horses, it turns out, read humans like a book. And they didn’t care how late I was to my next appointment. I learned to take a few deep breaths before I got out of my car at the stable, settling myself.

I named my mare Etherea. She was playful, mischievous and stubborn. The little pony, who had white speckles on her back that reminded us of the Milky Way, became Myst. Etherea quickly learned, to Jen’s displeasure, how to unlatch her paddock and free herself and Myst at will. “This one’s really smart!” Jen told me. Eventually, I mastered the basics: putting on a harness, saddling a horse, getting on and off, brushing and washing them. On the big day several weeks later, we finally moved our small herd from Jen’s stable to our property.

Touching Sanity

We own 120 acres of paradise in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The land is indescribably beautiful with views of the Smoky Mountains 30 miles away. When we first bought the property, my wife and I were made giddy every time we stepped on it. It was our life’s dream to own such land. Inexcorably, projects popped up, and now the land meant work to me. I still enjoyed it, but every time I went there the overwhelming feeling of tasks undone covered up the initial wonder I had felt. Now with horses living there, I had multiplied daily upkeep. Other, more pressing projects had to be put on hold while I tended to the horses’ needs. One afternoon, after I’d been working for several hours, I decided on a whim to take a break and lead my horse, Etherea to a higher pasture on our property. The other horses followed along. What came next was unexpected and life-changing.

After the steep walk up to the high pasture, I reclined against a large rock and watched the horses graze. For the first time in months, I allowed myself to just sit. And the world gradually came alive. I realized that Etherea was my teacher. I was not training her; it was the other way around. I looked around, letting it all in: the sun lighting up the puffy white clouds against the jet-blue sky; the lush green grass at my feet; the sound of the wind moving through the trees. And the horses eating, slowly, methodically – they had no where else to go, nothing else to do. And neither did I, really. I let it soak in that Etherea, Myst, and Trooper live in this moment all of the time. The power of their presence fell over me like a soft, warm blanket. I took another deep breath, and felt fully alive for the first time in many months. I will always remember that first climb to the top with Etherea; I travel back there as often as I can. Now, I crave my daily walk to the high pasture with Etherea and the others.

Etherea Holds Class

The bond I have formed with these horses is a miracle to me. Here is one of them, being my teacher. It may look like I am leading her, but she is the one leading me to sanity every day.

I get caught up in what I’m doing, start to take my life responsibilities too seriously, and she is there, bringing me back from the edge of insanity. When it’s time to head down to the lower pasture, I put Etherea on a lead and calmly wait. She looks at me to see if I am serious. Pulling doesn’t work… at all. These beautiful creatures can be immovable masses of muscle when they wish to be; try to force them in the direction they don’t want to go, and they just say, “Nope.” Understand them (understanding yourself in the process), and they flow as smooth as silk.

“I’m eating grass, I’m not interested in walking downhill right now,” she tells me, holding my eye contact with hers. “Etherea, I’m late. I’ve got to go.” “I don’t care about that. I’m eating grass.”

She always knows… just knows… when I’m coming to take her somewhere she wants, and she willingly lets me put on her halter. When she doesn’t want to go, she becomes a statue. Not pulling against me, but just an immovable rock. Then the negotiations start. She is firm, steadfast, calm, and playful. She doesn’t fight. She just holds. “I’m eating grass,” she tells me. “Your agenda can wait.”

If I can just be with her, stay with her, feel with her – even if just for a blissful few moments – and lay down my sword and armor. She offers the greatest gift… the gift of staying in this moment. All the rest is insanity.

I stand next to her shoulder and gently nudge her to move with me. Then, this massive animal that could throw me like a rag doll, walks down with me with no tension on her lead. It is a magical thing to FEEL. Seeing someone else do it does not do it justice. We walk, as one, down the 1/2 mile, steep grassy path back to the paddock. At times she hesitates and stops. Almost always, it is because one of the other horses has stopped to graze. We wait together until Etherea signals that it is time to go, letting down her resistance and walking fluidly with me again. Neither one of us has anywhere else to be.

Sanity on Tap

It seems sometimes that insanity is winning. Violence, drug addiction, homelessness, war, disease: if these negativities haven’t touched one’s life directly, all one has to do is just turn on the news for a mind-full. Sanity, on the other hand, is also always there for the taking. I mean, it is ALWAYS here with us, just beneath the surface. It can take work to see past the muddied water to the smooth, calm river floor. Once you learn to see it, it gets easier next time. The horses lead me to this peace every time I am with them. They are in the moment, always. They don’t have a future agenda. And to be fully with them, I have to move into the present moment myself. There is no greater gift.

Faramarz Hidaji, M.D.