Most everybody who knows me knows that I love horses. Currently I have five of them. There’s Blazer, Fancy, Mountain Lady, Champ and Killian. I don’t ride much anymore, but during the winter I feed them every day. When it isn’t freezing cold, I sit on a bucket and just watch and listen to them munch on hay. It’s my therapy, and it is much cheaper than professional counseling. It also gives me time to think. The other day I even learned a firsthand life lesson. Blazer and Killian seem to be good buddies. They hang out together, and at feeding time eat from the same stack of hay. Even though they are friends, Blazer tries to nip at Killian to keep him from eating his hay. There is just one problem, he can’t eat and nip at the same time. So Blazer has figured out that he had better do less nipping and more eating.
I have observed that some people haven’t learned the lesson that my old horse has learned. They spend far too much of their lives nipping at something. Perhaps it’s an old wound that they won’t allow to heal. Often it is jealousy. Negativity about most everything and everybody is the source of a lot of nipping. Gossip usually has a good amount of nipping mixed in.
The lesson I learned from Blazer is pretty clear. You can’t feed yourself and grow like you should when you are nipping. Perhaps that is why we have an idiom for good, clear right thinking. We call it good old fashioned horse sense.
Happy trails!
Terry A. Morrison