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Julian Thinks the Barn Is Stupid · Relatively Stable

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[music]
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Julian thinks the barn is stupid.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Some thoughts on consent, control, and allowing everyone to have an opinion.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: One, the courtroom in my head.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: My grandmother told me that I'd missed my calling as a lawyer because I like
0:41
SPEAKER_00: to argue all the time.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: So it's a relief to take a break from my constant pushing back against the world
0:50
SPEAKER_00: when I'm in a coaching session.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: My boundaries in my coaching role force me to put my own thoughts and opinions in
0:58
SPEAKER_00: the backseat so I can lean into my client's lived reality.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: So it was an act of almost biting my tongue in half when
1:08
SPEAKER_00: a coaching client told me this week that they didn't believe in climate change.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Like an old paper file cabinet,
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SPEAKER_00: I immediately begin flicking through the questions I keep at the ready
1:22
SPEAKER_00: for times like these when my desire to tell someone they're wrong is ill-timed
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SPEAKER_00: and inappropriate.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Questions are a fine tool when you need to control your emotional reactions.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: I asked when they had started seeing climate change as a hoax.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: I asked how the idea of climate change was at odds with the natural seasons they experienced.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: I asked if it would be harmful for anyone to live as if it was real.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: The client and I ended up having a great conversation.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: We both walked away from the exchange with things to consider and
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And this my friends is how we stop making enemies because of our core beliefs.
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SPEAKER_00: We have to sit down, talk,
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SPEAKER_00: and walk away from the table with the relationship mattering more
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SPEAKER_00: than our rightness.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I still suck at doing this, but I've made it my life's work to get better.
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SPEAKER_00: There are treasures on the other side of honest, sensible debate.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm determined to find them.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: The conversation inspired me to deeply explore the changes
2:36
SPEAKER_00: the seasons have undergone in my lifetime,
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SPEAKER_00: narrowing it down to the upstate of South Carolina,
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SPEAKER_00: where I've spent most of my life outside with the horses.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: The initial numbers made me mad.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: No, we had not seen much variation in the average high and low temperatures.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: This temperate rainforest region is known for its sweltering highs and frigid lows,
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SPEAKER_00: along with periods of drought and heavy rains, for much of its known history.
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SPEAKER_00: As I studied the data, I felt like my beloved talking points were being ripped in half.
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SPEAKER_00: But wait,
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SPEAKER_00: while the temperature extremes have mostly remained the same,
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SPEAKER_00: Our growing season has not.
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SPEAKER_00: The amount of time we now have between last frost in spring and first frost
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SPEAKER_00: in autumn has shifted by 64 days in my lifetime.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: The USDA has redrawn its plant hardiness map for the region twice in my lifetime.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: In the year I was born, Greenville, South Carolina had 178 frost-free days.
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SPEAKER_00: Today, the typical frost-free season is about 242 days.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: After the conversation with my client,
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SPEAKER_00: I went looking for evidence to support what I already believed, which,
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SPEAKER_00: when you think about it,
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SPEAKER_00: is the same as going into a conversation determined to change someone's mind.
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SPEAKER_00: No matter how I sniffed around and tried to change the data to prove my sense
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SPEAKER_00: of rightness, the numbers wouldn't cooperate.
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SPEAKER_00: The information asked me to do what I'd initially reminded myself to do
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SPEAKER_00: with my client, shut up and listen.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Buried within my sense of intellectual superiority was information I needed to receive.
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SPEAKER_00: Our temperatures haven't changed in my region,
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SPEAKER_00: but the way plants respond to the environment has.
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SPEAKER_00: By a big whopping two months.
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SPEAKER_00: And there it was.
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SPEAKER_00: It wasn't what I'd hoped to find, but the information was valuable nonetheless.
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SPEAKER_00: I spend my life with plants and horses.
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SPEAKER_00: Those two extra months of warmer weather change how I work and the world that I work in.
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SPEAKER_00: But I'm not coming to you today to talk about climate change,
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SPEAKER_00: and I'm not trying to change your mind.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: What I want to talk about is control.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between being in control and being controlling.
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SPEAKER_00: And I know I confuse the two all the time.
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SPEAKER_00: Being controlling requires something outside of me to change.
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SPEAKER_00: I need you to agree with me.
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SPEAKER_00: I need the horse to get on the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: I need the situation to resolve itself in the way I've decided it should.
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SPEAKER_00: Being in control asks something much harder.
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SPEAKER_00: It asks me to decide what really belongs to me.
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SPEAKER_00: My reaction belongs to me.
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SPEAKER_00: My questions belong to me.
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SPEAKER_00: My boundaries belong to me.
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SPEAKER_00: What I do with the information I have belongs to me.
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SPEAKER_00: My opinion belongs to me.
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SPEAKER_00: What I don't get to decide though is what's yours.
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SPEAKER_00: Two, the only acceptable ending.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: I spent many years as a freelance instructor spread across many barns,
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SPEAKER_00: but I longed to stay in one spot during the day.
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SPEAKER_00: When the opportunity arose for me to lease the farm that I had grown up riding in,
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SPEAKER_00: I jumped on it.
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SPEAKER_00: At the time, I had two school horses of my very own who lived at my friend's farm.
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SPEAKER_00: I will never be able to relate to her how grateful I am for the time I was given
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SPEAKER_00: at her place, though I try to put it into words whenever I see her.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: As it came time to move my horses,
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SPEAKER_00: the few saddles I owned and the horses that could be counted
6:57
SPEAKER_00: on one hand wearing mittens should have,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: theoretically,
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SPEAKER_00: Been far easier to manage than when we packed up last year and moved a farm
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SPEAKER_00: of 15 horses.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Except Max, my now 32-year-old saint of a school horse, refused to load on the trailer.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Max was always a reserved loader,
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SPEAKER_00: compounded by a rough ride I'd given him on the way to attend a Hunter Pace and
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SPEAKER_00: a friend's borrowed trailer a few years before.
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SPEAKER_00: To make up for that tight,
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SPEAKER_00: rattling drive,
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SPEAKER_00: I'd purchased a three-horse slant load with big,
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SPEAKER_00: wide doors that opened to a sturdy ramp.
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SPEAKER_00: Max possessed zero reason to refuse to get on the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: He wasn't angry about it or frustrated.
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SPEAKER_00: He just stood with his feet planted on the shady green lawn at my friend's place
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SPEAKER_00: while he refused to take a single step forward to load onto the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: I grew angrier as he stood in place.
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SPEAKER_00: I grew more frustrated as the minutes passed.
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SPEAKER_00: My voice rose and my hands rose.
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SPEAKER_00: Urgency blazed in my body from my toes to my head.
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SPEAKER_00: All that energy became laser focused on the creature in front of me.
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SPEAKER_00: Lucky for me,
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SPEAKER_00: he was good enough to take it and continue believing in the person behind her rage.
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SPEAKER_00: Max has always patiently waited for me to catch up.
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SPEAKER_00: Hours later, Max still stood in place.
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SPEAKER_00: We were both sweaty and bruised.
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SPEAKER_00: He hadn't taken one step toward the lovely cushioned trailer ramp.
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SPEAKER_00: Now strewn with shavings from where my feet had kicked bedding out of the trailer
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SPEAKER_00: and a mad scramble to be in control.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Looking back, I realized that behind all that urgency was a single emotion.
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SPEAKER_00: Fear.
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SPEAKER_00: What if I couldn't accomplish my goal?
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SPEAKER_00: Did I actually know anything at all about horses?
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SPEAKER_00: Would Max and I ever make the move to our new home?
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SPEAKER_00: The answer to all three questions felt at that moment like it depended on Max moving his feet.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: This was my mistake.
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SPEAKER_00: I had handed a horse responsibility for proving something about me
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SPEAKER_00: that he could never prove because it wasn't his job to validate me.
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SPEAKER_00: The more frightened I became that I wasn't in control,
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SPEAKER_00: the more determined I became to control him.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: In that state of mind,
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't need Max to tell me what made him hesitant to get on the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't need more information.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even really care if Max trusted me.
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SPEAKER_00: I just needed him to get on the trailer.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: At some point during those four hours,
9:53
SPEAKER_00: getting Max onto that trailer stopped being a transportation problem
9:57
SPEAKER_00: and became evidence I needed to prove I knew what I was doing.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Max loading became all the reasons I argued in the courtroom of my mind.
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SPEAKER_00: I needed proof that I could solve the problem in front of me and
10:12
SPEAKER_00: that I had some business opening a farm where I would teach other people how to work
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SPEAKER_00: with horses.
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SPEAKER_00: I had predetermined the only acceptable ending to the story.
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SPEAKER_00: Max would get on the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: Do you know when he finally moved forward like it was nothing at all and loaded onto
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SPEAKER_00: the trailer?
10:33
SPEAKER_00: When he good and well decided to.
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SPEAKER_00: For no reason whatsoever as I panted like a rabid skunk beside him,
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SPEAKER_00: Max just lifted his head,
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SPEAKER_00: walked up on the ramp,
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SPEAKER_00: turned to wait for me to close the divider that held him in place,
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SPEAKER_00: and settled in for the ride.
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SPEAKER_00: It had absolutely nothing to do with me.
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SPEAKER_00: Three.
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SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to want things too.
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SPEAKER_00: Thankfully,
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SPEAKER_00: for all the horses that would eventually join our herd at
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SPEAKER_00: the budding Bramblewood Stables, I stopped needing the horse to get on the trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: Not literally,
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SPEAKER_00: because sometimes horses really do need to get on trailers,
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SPEAKER_00: but I stopped believing that my skill to make one do it proved anything spectacular
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SPEAKER_00: or special about me.
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SPEAKER_00: In time,
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SPEAKER_00: I remembered what Max taught me,
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SPEAKER_00: and the horses finally became allowed to have their own opinions.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: This idea that the horses are autonomous beings sits at the heart
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SPEAKER_00: of almost everything we do at my farm.
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SPEAKER_00: We pay attention when a horse says no, and we take a step back to look for the why.
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SPEAKER_00: Without the rush of goals or agendas,
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SPEAKER_00: we change our approach and more often than not find ourselves changing
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SPEAKER_00: the entire plan.
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SPEAKER_00: But this is a very hard thing to teach humans because it's really easy to take all
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SPEAKER_00: that consent and turn it into an excuse not to do anything
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SPEAKER_00: to uphold our boundaries both physically and emotionally.
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SPEAKER_00: When we give the horse a voice,
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SPEAKER_00: most humans translate that into meaning the human doesn't have a right to opinions
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SPEAKER_00: of their own.
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SPEAKER_00: A relationship in which only one party is allowed to say no isn't consensual.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just one-sided speech.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Sermons can be pretty boring.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: I know this for a fact because the cult I was raised in often had three-hour sermons.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: I became a writer because I needed something to pass the time on Sunday mornings,
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SPEAKER_00: and if I deconstructed an offering envelope well enough and wrote tiny enough,
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SPEAKER_00: it looked like I was taking notes.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: What I see happen time and time again when I pair someone with a horse is that
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SPEAKER_00: the human becomes so afraid of asking for what they want that they allow the horse
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SPEAKER_00: to run all over them.
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SPEAKER_00: When a new person visits the farm,
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SPEAKER_00: most of our initial groundwork sessions center on walking the fields and grooming
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SPEAKER_00: a horse in the barn.
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SPEAKER_00: We orient them to the purpose of this place and give humans a chance to slow down
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SPEAKER_00: and sink into their physical and emotional and spiritual senses.
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SPEAKER_00: I guide their interactions with reminders to always keep a way out,
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SPEAKER_00: never step behind the horse, and stay generally aware of these big flighty beasts.
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SPEAKER_00: Even the quietest horse can be a danger when the wind shifts.
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SPEAKER_00: Toward the end of the session,
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SPEAKER_00: we'll wander out to the riding ring where the person will spend time leading
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SPEAKER_00: the horse around and getting a feel for starting and stopping with a lead rope
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SPEAKER_00: in their hands.
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SPEAKER_00: Not all new clients are beginners.
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SPEAKER_00: Many are coming back to horses after some time away.
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SPEAKER_00: Many have led a horse before.
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SPEAKER_00: But this is where it gets weird.
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SPEAKER_00: On the short walk from the barn to the ring,
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SPEAKER_00: the horse will dive for grass because it's delicious in the path beside the ring.
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SPEAKER_00: The humans will let the horse eat.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll ask the human to lift the horse's head or to give a soft nudge towards
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SPEAKER_00: the horse's mouth with the toe of their boot.
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SPEAKER_00: The human will halfheartedly try and then stare at me,
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SPEAKER_00: completely baffled as to what they should do next.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll walk over and urge the horse to lift their head,
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SPEAKER_00: blades of grass stuck in the sides of their mouth and keep walking.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll pass the rope back to the client.
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SPEAKER_00: The horse will dive for grass.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll nudge the horse's nose with the toe of my boot.
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SPEAKER_00: The horse getting wise to my ways will insert themselves between the client
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SPEAKER_00: and me opportunistically blocking my way to help them.
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SPEAKER_00: The horse will resume eating grass.
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SPEAKER_00: We'll keep this up until the human reaches the safety of the arena's sandy footing.
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SPEAKER_00: But Lord help me,
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SPEAKER_00: if the human won't allow that horse to nudge them to the grassy fence line,
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SPEAKER_00: usually when I'm just far enough away to be unable to stop the sudden snack time.
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SPEAKER_00: The human with me perfectly understands that the horse is taking advantage of them.
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SPEAKER_00: They giggle each time the horse does it.
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SPEAKER_00: Until the horse steps on their toe.
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SPEAKER_00: The human knows what is happening,
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SPEAKER_00: but somewhere between my explanation of how we need to listen
15:45
SPEAKER_00: when horses communicate and the horse discovering the all-you-can-eat buffet along
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SPEAKER_00: the arena fence, the human has decided that saying no would be unkind.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: This is where I find myself saying the same thing over and over again.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to want something too.
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SPEAKER_00: Listening to a horse doesn't require you to become a doormat.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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SPEAKER_00: I would argue that disappearing from the conversation isn't particularly respectful
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SPEAKER_00: to the horse either.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Horses understand boundaries remarkably well.
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SPEAKER_00: They negotiate them with one another all day long.
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SPEAKER_00: Watch a herd around a pile of hay and you will quickly discover
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SPEAKER_00: that respecting another horse does not mean everyone gets to eat
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SPEAKER_00: from whichever pile they please.
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SPEAKER_00: And this is where the word consent gets complicated.
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SPEAKER_00: Consent doesn't mean the horse always gets what he wants.
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SPEAKER_00: Understanding what the horse wants and allowing him to do anything he wishes are not
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SPEAKER_00: the same thing.
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SPEAKER_00: For a time, I thought the opposite of controlling a horse was giving up control.
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SPEAKER_00: But these are opposite ends of the same problem.
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SPEAKER_00: When Max refused to load, I decided that only one of us was allowed to have an opinion.
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SPEAKER_00: Max would get on the trailer because I said he would.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: When my clients follow a horse helplessly towards the grass,
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SPEAKER_00: they've done the same thing in reverse.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: The horse's opinion has become the only one that matters.
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SPEAKER_00: Neither one is much of a relationship.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: There has to be a place in the
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Last weekend, we endured a miserably hot morning of lessons.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: I went up to the house for lunch,
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SPEAKER_00: and when I came back,
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SPEAKER_00: the sky was darkening dramatically while a large group
18:29
SPEAKER_00: of adult riders prepared their horses for a lesson.
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SPEAKER_00: Michelle taught beside me,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: and we scanned the radar on our phones as the wind shook the trees and thunder began
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SPEAKER_00: to boom.
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SPEAKER_00: We weren't going to be able to ride but we had groundwork to study
18:45
SPEAKER_00: if everyone could hear over the rain on the barn roof.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: But first we needed to get everyone into the barn.
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SPEAKER_00: The humans unanimously agreed that this was the best idea and most of the horses did too.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Julian thought the barn was stupid.
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SPEAKER_00: Our world-class dork is no stranger to a barn,
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SPEAKER_00: but take him away from where he can stare longingly at his women,
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SPEAKER_00: who are still out in the pasture, and Julian melts into a complete tantrum.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: We put him in the stall where he called out, paced, and spun around to look out the window.
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SPEAKER_00: He called some more.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: We checked on him,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: we talked to him, we made sure we weren't missing anything beyond the obvious.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't anything wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: Julian just wanted out of the barn.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: And here was a horse giving me a very clear answer.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: His communication was anything but subtle.
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SPEAKER_00: He did not consent to the arrangement I had made on his behalf.
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SPEAKER_00: He wanted the stall door open so he could return to his women,
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SPEAKER_00: and he was willing to make his case to every person standing in the barn.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: I understood him perfectly, but I left the door closed.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: We went about our business talking about the history of in-hand work with horses.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: We used the barn hallway to practice moving our bodies to dance with the horse.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Soon we paired our moves with a real live horse.
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SPEAKER_00: We did not use Julian.
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SPEAKER_00: His opinion mattered and he let us know it,
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SPEAKER_00: but his desires weren't calling the shots in the moment.
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SPEAKER_00: Taking him out to the field would have been dangerous for the humans
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SPEAKER_00: with lightning flashing all around.
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SPEAKER_00: Julian was in no frame of mind to participate in what we were doing,
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SPEAKER_00: let alone focus on one of us.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
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SPEAKER_00: he was busy screaming for his girlfriends,
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SPEAKER_00: which would have accomplished very little beyond giving all of us something else
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SPEAKER_00: to struggle over.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: So we listened to him, but we didn't ask him to work.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: We didn't punish him for feeling upset.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: We didn't demand that he stand quietly and prove that we were in charge.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: We didn't decide that his distress was inconvenient and therefore irrelevant.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: But we also didn't open the stall door because there was lightning outside.
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SPEAKER_00: My responsibility at that moment was bigger than Julian's desire to return to his field.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: I could understand exactly what he wanted,
21:29
SPEAKER_00: take his communication seriously and still tell him no.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: More importantly, I didn't need Julian to agree with my decision.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: That, I think,
21:39
SPEAKER_00: is the piece I was missing all those years ago while I stood next to Max's trailer.
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SPEAKER_00: I thought being in control meant getting the horse to do what I had decided he should do.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: If Max would just move his feet, I could feel competent again.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: His compliance would restore my sense of control.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Julian was still calling from his stall an hour later,
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SPEAKER_00: and I was just fine letting him disagree with me.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: When the storm ended,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Michelle and her student led Julian to the field,
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SPEAKER_00: and he was a perfect gentleman, not a foot out of place.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: He quietly waited for them to remove his halter before ambling away to be reunited
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SPEAKER_00: with his girls.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Nothing had to be won.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Which is a good thing because some things just aren't a race.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Julian did not learn to love the barn nor had I proven
22:35
SPEAKER_00: that I could make him stand quietly in a stall.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Julian spent an hour telling everyone what he thought about this business
22:43
SPEAKER_00: and we spent an hour letting him think his thoughts without trying to change them.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: There would have been no use.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: When the storm blew over, my answer changed because the timing was right.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: As much as I would love to, I cannot control outcomes.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Being in control doesn't mean that I can manipulate the ending.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I can't keep Julian from losing his mind over his girlfriends,
23:09
SPEAKER_00: nor can I make another human see the world the way I do.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: What I can control is myself.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: I can hear a creature's solid no without needing to overpower it or change their answer.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I can hold a boundary without needing the other party to approve of the lines I've drawn.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: I can change my mind when new information gives me reason to see a larger picture.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And as I do, I can sink into the knowledge that amending my beliefs doesn't mean that I've lost.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: My coaching client and I never agreed on climate change.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: We didn't need to.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: The real measure of being in control Is how little I need to control everybody else.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Paid subscribers get to come a little deeper into life here at Bramblewood Stables.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Each week I share a video montage from around the farm.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: The ordinary moments that don't always make it into the essays.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Horses being horses, work getting done, things going sideways.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Calm mornings,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: ridiculous afternoons,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: and glimpses of the people and animals who make this place what it is.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: These videos are like being handed a cup of coffee and invited to hang around
24:36
SPEAKER_00: the barn for a while.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: Field Notes
24:47
SPEAKER_00: I've spent most of my life confusing being in control with having control.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I've wanted to have control over the weather and the horses and the people I love
24:59
SPEAKER_00: and the people who irritate the shit out of me.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: I've wanted people to understand what I meant instead of what they decided I meant.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: I've wanted horses to recognize that the expensive trailer with
25:11
SPEAKER_00: the nice wide ramp I've
25:19
SPEAKER_00: wanted clients to believe me
25:20
SPEAKER_00: when I tell them they are allowed to take up space.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: I've wanted a thunderstorm to arrive at a more convenient time.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And I have certainly wanted people who believe things I find completely nonsensical
25:35
SPEAKER_00: to sit still long enough for me to explain,
25:38
SPEAKER_00: preferably through visual aids, exactly why they're wrong.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: None of this has ever changed anyone's mind but my own.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Maybe control is about being able to stay present when something isn't going
25:54
SPEAKER_00: the way I want it to.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: If I remember to do this,
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I can feel the fear below my urgency before I turn my wrath
26:03
SPEAKER_00: into somebody else's problem.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe control is learning to ask another question before I argue.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think we sometimes get the concept of control wrong with horses
26:19
SPEAKER_00: and probably with one another.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: We imagine that honoring someone else's autonomy requires us
26:25
SPEAKER_00: to surrender some portion of our own.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Max was allowed to be afraid of the trailer.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: The horse beside the arena is allowed to desperately want the grass.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Julian was allowed to think spending Saturday afternoon in a stall
26:41
SPEAKER_00: While his women remained in the field was a great injustice.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: My coaching client is allowed to believe something about the world that I do not.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: None of these things require me to disappear from the conversation.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm allowed to have information.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm allowed to have boundaries.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm allowed to say no.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: I am allowed to change my answer.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: I am even allowed to be wronged.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the last one is the hardest.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Because controlling offers us the illusion that
27:18
SPEAKER_00: if we can just arrange everything correctly,
27:21
SPEAKER_00: we can protect ourselves from the uncomfortable possibility
27:25
SPEAKER_00: that we don't actually know how the story is going to end.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Max might not get on the trailer.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: The person across the table might walk away believing exactly what they believed
27:37
SPEAKER_00: when they sat down.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: The horse might spend an entire hour yelling from a stall despite every bit
27:45
SPEAKER_00: of horsemanship that I possess.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: And the storm is still going to come.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm finally starting to see that my work isn't about stopping the storm.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: My work is knowing when to close the door,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: when to open it again,
28:05
SPEAKER_00: and to become increasingly comfortable with Julian and Being allowed
28:10
SPEAKER_00: to have something to say about both.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Love, Kim.