As I’ve mentioned before, I’m learning natural horsemanship techniques so that I can be a better leader to my horse and have a closer bond with him. While watching one of the Parelli Level 1 DVDs recently, something one of the instructors said resonated with me. She posed the question, when someone asks you if you can do something you’ve never done before, especially something hard or scary, what should you say? Her answer:

“I don’t know.”

Not “I can’t.”

Because, really, you don’t yet know if you can do it or not, because you haven’t tried. You don’t know what is possible.

Some other alternatives she came up with included: I haven’t up until now. I haven’t done that yet. In the past, I haven’t tried that.

These phrases leave the door open, instead of slamming it shut with an “I can’t.” I’ve found “I don't know” very helpful when I’m offered the chance to do something that scares me. I don’t always rise to the challenge—but sometimes I do.

What are some things you say to yourself when faced with a challenge?

In doing puzzles, I’m OK with not knowing, at least up to a point. When I get stuck on a crossword clue, I skip it, coming back to it later. If I find I’m skipping a lot of clues, maybe I’ll put the whole puzzle aside for a few hours. When I pick it up again, I almost always do better. The same with a jigsaw puzzle—after trying repeatedly to find an elusive piece, I’ve often come back later only to pick it up and put it straight where it belongs. (Provided my husband and/or son hasn’t hidden the piece from me.)

If I’m reading a mystery that has me stumped, I step back and watch the action without trying to guess the crime’s perpetrator, simply enjoying the writing, the characters and story. Sometimes, the clues I need are just a few pages away (and sometimes I remain stumped).

I find life itself a bit puzzling, don’t you? I only see bits and pieces of the whole, not knowing how choice A will lead to consequence B, which in turn produces outcome C. Some things that seem disastrous often work out to be blessings in disguise—and sometimes the opposite occurs.

I often think of the Chinese parable about the farmer who used an old horse to plow his fields. One day the horse ran away. When his neighbors came to commiserate with the old man, he replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A few days later, the horse returned, bringing with her a herd of wild horses from the nearby hills. The neighbors returned to congratulate the farmer, who replied, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

When the farmer’s son was thrown and broke his leg while trying to tame one of the wild horses, the sympathetic neighbors were met once again with “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

A few weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted all the able-bodied young men…leaving the farmer’s son with his broken leg behind.

It can be hard not knowing. When I’m uncertain about my next step, or facing frustrations of some kind, I should take my cue from my behavior with other puzzles: watch the action and enjoy the mystery, or put it aside for a later time when things somehow clarify themselves. If things seem bad, wait and see what happens next. A setback can become an opportunity, and an opportunity can become a setback. I guess the key is knowing that it all fits together, somehow, into the perfect puzzle of my life.


Have you ever had an experience that initially seemed bad, but turned out to be for the good? Vice versa? What did you take away from the experience?

My two reading challenges are off to a great start, and already I'm having so much fun. I'll periodically post about what I'm reading, and I'll keep an updated list on my separate 2011 Reading Challenges page if you want to check in between posts. So far, here's what I've read: 


Off the Shelf Challenge (Goal: 15)

A Pelican at Blandings, P.G. Wodehouse (fiction). I love P.G. Wodehouse and his gentle, goofy humor. This book cost me 50 cents at my library's "Friends of the Library" bookstore and it was delightful from start to finish.  The first paragraph reads: "The summer day was drawing to a close and dusk had fallen on Blandings Castle, shrouding from view the ancient battlements, dulling the silver surface of the lake and causing Lord Emsworth's supreme Berkshire sow Empress of Blandings to leave the open air portion of her sty and withdraw into the covered shed where she did her sleeping. A dedicated believer in the maxim of early to bed and early to rise, she always turned in at about this time. Only by getting its regular eight hours can a pig keep up to the mark and preserve that schoolgirl complexion."

Drinking the Rain, Alix Kates Shulman (memoir). When she turned 50, Shulman, a novelist, began spending her summers alone at her family's cabin on an island off the coast of Maine. Sound romantic? The cabin had no indoor plumbing or heat! Shulman read, wrote, even foraged for food in the tidal pools (particularly mussels) and the area surrounding her cabin. Alone, she discovered the interconnectedness of all life.

A favorite quote: "For years, I avidly read books and eagerly wrote them, systematically trying to stuff my head with all the thoughts of mankind, but always so determined to master a subject or pursue a goal that I seldom practiced the simple pleasures of reading whatever caught my fancy or following a thought wherever it happened to lead. My plans and projects were usually so backed up that no matter what work I was engaged in at any moment, I suspected it ought to be something else." (I know just how she felt.)

The Shadowy Horses, Susanna Kearsley (fiction). A new author for me, thanks to Danielle at A Work in Progress. Kearsley's been compared to vintage Mary Stewart (Madame, Will You Talk? My Brother Michael, etc.), and I found her writing very similar. I'm thrilled because I love vintage Mary Stewart!

Verity Grey, Kearsley's protagonist, comes to Scotland to work on an archaeolgical dig searching for remains of a Roman marching camp. "I woke in the darkness, listening. The sound that wrenched me from my sleep had been strange to by city-bred ears. Train-like, yet not a train...the rhythm was too wild, too random. A horse, I thought. A horse in the next field over, galloping endlessly around and around, galloping, galloping...." There are no horses anywhere near the house Verity is staying in--why does she hear them running every night? What other ghostly presences haunt Rosehill?

The Summer Book--Tove Jansson (fiction). Jansson is a Swedish writer, who is known mostly for her children's books. I also discovered her through Danielle. (I've gotten tons of great book recommendations from Danielle's blog--you should check it out!) Reading this book felt like being wrapped in a warm summer day--pleasant in chilly January. It tells the story of a 6-year-old girl and her grandmother spending the summer on an island off the coast of Finland (I must have a thing for summer island books!). It's more like a series of vignettes than a true novel, but each story is quietly beautiful. From page 36: "[Grandmother] turned on her side and put her arm over her head. Between the arm of her sweater, her hat, and the white reeds, she could see a triangle of sky, sea and sand--quite a small triangle. There was a blade of grass in the sand beside her, and between its sawtoothed leaves it held a piece of seabird down--the taut white rib in the middle, surrounded by the down itself, which was pale brown and lighter than the air, and then darker and shiny towards the tip, which ended in a tiny but spirited curve. The down moved in a draft of air too slight for her to feel."

Vintage Mystery Challenge (Goal: 4-6)

The Crime at Black Dudley, Margery Allingham. This is her first "Albert Campion" mystery, and a pure delight. I found Allingham's writing flowed easily and made me want to keep reading. I also enjoyed the characters in this story, and I will be reading more of her work. (Sorry I don't have a quote for this one--I returned it to the library before I wrote this post!)

I've requested my next book from the library: The Norths Meet Murder, by Frances and Richard Lockridge.

What are you reading right now?

I had a couple of blog post possibilities in the works for today--but after I arrived at the barn this morning to find this:

And he still had his breakfast on his face (the brown stuff on his nose is bran mash).

Fortunately, it was warm enough today to hose him off instead of curry and brush all that mud and sand off him.