Wrangler Dani

(This piece was originally published on my Substack, where I put all of my new writing these days. You can subscribe, here.)

I used to break colts when I was younger. The word “break” has a bad connotation – folks imagine a surly cowboy beating on a terrified animal until it gives up. But that’s not what breaking means. Most cowboys I’ve known understand that a good horse is a trusting horse, one who doesn’t fear people but wants to partner with us. Breaking is simply another word for discipline. Breaking is a method of funneling energy, fear and instinct into a powerful ally instead of a dangerous foe.

For more than a decade, I have written every day. I scribble scattered thoughts in notebooks or on the back of the water bill, I gather quotes and ideas on my grocery list – but to write, to really compose – I have to sit at my laptop. Without the discipline of a fresh white page, the knowledge that I can actually take these questions and follow them to a point, if not an answer, I struggle to do more than make a dust-storm in the prairie of my mind. Like a bad horse-trainer or unfair debater, my mind asks impossible, rhetorical questions, designed to catch me up and make me feel stupid, naive or unsafe.

Several months ago I broke the middle finger of my left hand (yes, catching a rowdy horse) so typing was a challenge. This put me into something of a spiritual rodeo. Without the contemplation of the page, my attention span was frenetic and wild. The inspirations that I used to jot down on receipts for later contemplation became all I wrote, so I was left with the emptiness of platitudes: ideas with no substance, the cross-stitch pillows of my consciousness.

This year I read the wonderful book A Pilgrimage to Eternity. In it, writer Timothy Egan tells of his multi-month long pilgrimage across Europe in search of faith and an open mind, using an ancient pathway and almost-extinct tradition as his guide.

He writes: “One of my goals on this trip is to cut down on the amount of useless information I consume. Easy access to a world of tempting crap has clearly not been good for me. My attention span has shrunk. Sustained, deep reading or thinking are more difficult. I’m punch-drunk from the unrelenting present, the news alerts and flashes, all the chaos without context.”

Without a writing practice, the unrelenting present yipped incessantly at my heels. My finger eventually healed and I’ve returned to the page, only to find myself sweaty and aggravated within minutes. I’d much rather rant at stupid people than dig out the dumb ideas in my own brain.

So what’s the answer? We can’t all go on a pilgrimage across Europe or even bow down before the blinking cursor as I have done for so many years. As I recently discovered, my thought practice is untamed and easily smashed, like a bone crunching in the split-second it takes to realize a situation has turned dangerous, in the second it takes a horse to turn and run.

The New Testament writer Paul offers this wisdom: take every thought captive; make your mind obedient. Without such discipline, my psyche is a wild mustang, fearful, snorting, pawing at the ground, kicking in mid-air. Discipline – breaking – captivity – forces that energy into a positive place. A broke horse has the guts to climb a mountain or chase a cow but won’t fight when it gets stuck in a barbed-wire fence, won’t kick a human who’s trying to help. Discipline keeps me from being easily provoked, it helps me go to work without hurting those around me.

Breaking is the best thing that can happen to a smart, strong horse. It gives purpose and partnership to his strength, it offers context to his freedom.

May I have the courage to discipline my mind as well, not to give in to the reactive flashes and urges, but to sustain steady work that will last, like a green-broke colt who grows into his purpose after many miles in the saddle.