This text is about a journey that starts at ‘intense burning indifference’ and ends in… No, not now. Few are the readers that would like to know where their journey ends already by the end of the first sentence.
When I was one-digit years old, I used to do needlework. I ended up at it, because gazillions of times each day I asked the question none of my adult wanted to hear. “What shall I to do now?”. Now that I write these lines, after having resided in the two-digit age world for quite a while, I sincerely admire my younger self for the phrasing, that is so common for grown-ups in desperate situations and at the same time is as logically sound for myself at the time as a string of words could possibly be. There was a lot of “You shall not run down the stairs” (which together with “Don’t slide down the handrail” left me with no fun options other than walking down the stairs backwards and this turned out painful) and “Kids shall not interrupt the conversations of the adults” in my everyday life back then, so my political correctness is admirable in conveying the message “I am bored to death. If none of my ideas how to pass the time is good enough for you, dear adults, then could you please be kind to list me alternatives to choose from.”
I was already well educated never to turn down a meal, before I tasted it. So, when I was presented with the option of making needlework picture, I decided to try. The picture showed of a bunch of horses. The animals I didn’t have any opinion about. Although horses were remarkably popular – each time I needed to answer the question “Which is your favourite animal?” in the memory book of any classmate or neighbour, I found out that 70% of the people that wrote in it before me liked “Horse and dog” above all. Similar to “Favourite dish?” – “French fries”. When I asked in the family – my last resort for solving mysteries – is there anything special about the horse, so everyone is so keen of it, I received the answer “It is a magnificent animal”. Such an answer could easily make anyone at a tender age feel wrong with being indifferent to the magnificence, so I said to myself ‘fine, I like it, since I have no other choice’. I didn’t but…
Every living creature in my surroundings (except for the cat, of course) was keenly checking my progress on the embroidered picture with the horses daily. And if there was anything I liked, it was being centre of attention.
Thus, ages afterwards, I would cluelessly answer “Yes.” If anybody asked me did I like horses. Until I got the reply “Well, I think they are repulsive.”
And I secretly relaxed.
After twentyish years of relaxation, I read a scene in which a mare broke her back and I unconsciously screamed in terror so loud, that everyone else on the bus got intimidated. And I stopped my reading to stay with this scene. The mare was excreting herself for winning the race with her last reserves of energy, while the man on her back made an off-the cuff pull and after a remarkably intelligent race, thus broken, the animal needed to be shot.
As I read the whole thing over and again, the phrase “hold your horses” hovered in my mind. Why? Why hold it, when you risk killing it? People would tell you to hold your horses, when you enthusiastically go about a project and it will mean wait, slow down. It always sounded to me utterly misplaced, because if you abruptly stop your vehicle after having forced it into motion, nothing good will ever happen. The most annoying situation of all is to be served a problem, offer a solution and people who cannot catch up with the idea say “hold your horses”. Then blabber off-topic. Because on their road of perception this idea or similar will come in a fortnight.
While the only event, where it really makes sense to hold the horses, is if the surrounding noise would scare them off the path. So, in the example above, right in the middle of the backwards leading blabbering, the person with the idea should be told “hold your horses” in order to stream ahead when they calm down after the disturbance.
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