Know what? Most days, I've completely had it with horse people. Actually, most days I've had it with most people, but horse people in particular tend to be the recipients of my ire more than the rest of humanity, except for perhaps those girls on My Super Sweet 16. I've never met a class of people more self-involved, dishonest, and dramatic than horse people. I can delve into the myriad reasons why horse people act the way they do, but why bother attempting to analyze something that will never change. The more I'm around horse people, the more bitter I become about the sport.
I spend most days trying to remind myself that the dressage world is effectively a pretend world - outside of horses, when would any of this be important? There's a whole planet spinning outside of the dressage arena, making the efforts I expend in the dressage world frighteningly superficial and meaningless when I really take a hard look at it. Then I ask myself why I'm doing what I'm doing - why do I care about some nebulous concept of achievement that Grand Prix represents? What is this doing for me as a person?
I suppose it's truthful to say that I started riding dressage and worrying about achievement in the dressage world for lack of anything better to do. Everyone needs goals, regardless of how meaningless they are outside of a specific sphere, right? Some people want to be in politics, some people find validation in working to become a bishop. Of course, those spheres have their own dramas. Dressage is no different from anything else out there. I can't shake the feeling that if it wasn't dressage I had picked, I'd still be surrounded by the drama of whatever else I'd replaced dressage with. Might as well stick with the evil you know.
Still, I can't help but wonder what this is doing to me as a person. Success, like everything else under the sun, in the horse world is all about survival of the fittest - I'm not going to sugarcoat this as some people would. It is what it is. Let's be realistic here, in order to achieve anything, one has to be very focused on the goal, and I tend to be more committed to achievement than other people (read: I'm willing to do what it takes to meet an end). Machiavellian? Probably. But I also have to face the reality that I'm not entirely sure I like the person I have to be when it comes to horses. Who wants to be bitter and angry before they're 45?
I know I've had success more rapidly than most people - a brief perusal of this blog will satisfy any question about the validity of that statement. But, the reason for that success is because I've done what I've had to do - sacrificed personal relationships, sacrificed money, and probably sacrificed my future reputation to some extent. Six months ago I could barely canter Nicole - now, given a horse with the proper training, I can pop of one tempis with no problem. But that rapid improvement HAS come at a price, and I can feel the weight of it within me mentally. I can slowly feel myself becoming more sour as time goes on - do I really want any success in dressage if it turns me into a total bitch before the age of 30?
