Are You Waiting for the Conditions, or Hiding Behind Them?

A letter on the stories we tell about why we can't ride today, and the difference between a real prerequisite and a protective one.

I broke several bones last year, and Astrid, one of my horses, was out of work for almost six months while I healed. When I finally started her back up, I did what I always do. I charged in. She was one of my horses, I was capable, I knew what I was doing, and I did not see any reason to be tentative.

Then we had a couple of moments. Not catastrophic ones. But real enough that for a second I was not sure if she was going to get hurt or if I was, and my brain took that picture and filed it somewhere I could not consciously access.

I did not totally stop working with her. That would have been simpler and easier to notice. What I did instead was more subtle. I became suddenly incapable of working with Astrid unless the conditions were just right. I needed the barn to be quiet, no loud traffic, low wind, and an open schedule. I did not phrase it to myself as "I do not want to ride her." I phrased it as "today isn't quite the day." And because "today isn't quite the day" is such a reasonable-sounding sentence, and because I could always find something in the conditions that was less than ideal, the work became very occasional.

At some level, I knew what I was doing. I knew, in the way we know these things without saying them, that I was using the conditions to give myself an out. I still could not stop doing it for a while. We got through it. But I have gone back into that pattern with her occasionally since, and I see it now in other riders I know, and I am writing about it because it is a specific and subtle way we get in our own way.

Not the voice, not the freeze

If you have been reading this series of letters, you know I have been writing about the myriad of ways we self-sabotage as riders. In an earlier letter I wrote about the critic in your head. In the one right after, I wrote about the freeze that hits a familiar skill for no apparent reason. This letter is about a third pattern, and I want to name upfront how it is different from the other two, because the fix is different too.

The critic is a voice you can hear. She comments. She grades. She keeps you inside a self-conscious loop, and the fix is a working relationship with her.

The freeze is a silence. It is a specific movement that has gone offline for no apparent reason, and the fix is distance and time.

This third one is not a voice, and it is not a freeze. This one is a story. A story you are telling yourself, without acknowledging you are telling it, about why the conditions are not quite right to do the thing today. And the fix, unlike the other two, is not relational and not physical. The fix is honesty about why you are telling the story.

The perfect and the shield

The classical version of what I was doing has a name people quote often: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." The underlying implication is that you do not need to wait for the ideal conditions. Do the thing under whatever conditions you actually have. That is a fine sentiment. It is what you would say to a friend who keeps postponing getting back into the show ring until she learns her test a little better, or riding in a clinic because she doesn't have the right breeches.

The problem with that sentence is that it assumes we are actually waiting for things to be perfect. Most of the time we are not. Most of the time we have already accepted, in our conscious minds, that no conditions are ever perfect and that we should just get on with it. And yet the pattern still runs. The ride still gets postponed. The horse still stands unridden.

What I have come to think is that the "waiting for perfect" story is not, most of the time, actually a story about having the right conditions. It is a story about fear, or grief, or protection, and the language of conditions is the socially acceptable veneer we put on it so we do not have to look at it plainly.

I was not, if I am honest with you, waiting for the wind to be low and my schedule to be clear. I was scared. I had a picture of Astrid and me getting into a bad moment and I did not want to have another one. Fear is a hard sentence to say out loud, especially about a horse in your own paddock. "The conditions were not quite right" is a much easier sentence. So I said the easy one, over and over, and by the time I noticed I was doing it, Astrid had gone unworked for weeks.

What I have seen in other riders

I have seen this pattern in other riders. The forms it takes are various and generally invisible from the outside.

You need a new saddle before you can really work on the trot. You need a new horse before you can move up. You need better weather before you can school the tempis. You need the trainer's schedule to line up with yours in a way it never does. You need the ring to be dragged first. You need to lose a little more weight. You need to feel better in your shoulder. You need the wind to be under twelve miles an hour. You need the vet to say something specific before you can start canter work again.

Some of these are real prerequisites. That is what makes the pattern so slippery. Sometimes a saddle really is wrong. Sometimes the horse really is not the right match. Sometimes the shoulder really does need another week. If every single condition were fake, we would see through it quickly. What keeps the pattern going is that any given condition might be legitimate, and so each individual postponement passes a sniff test even when the sum of them is a story we are telling ourselves so we do not have to name what is actually going on.

The tell

There is a way to know, if you want to know. And a lot of us do not, which is fine, and something to notice too.

The tell is the shape of the pattern over time.

If a real prerequisite is missing, you address it and you do the thing. The saddle gets refitted, and then you ride. The vet clears you, and then you ride. You address the horse situation, and you ride.

If the missing condition is a protective story, the shape is different. The condition keeps moving. As soon as one thing gets resolved, another one arrives to take its place. The specificity of what makes today not-the-day gets more precise over time, and less predictable. The frequency of actually doing the thing keeps declining. And you can feel, if you are paying attention, a small guilty resistance to noticing any of this.

The moment of decision

Here is where I want to be honest about the hard part, because I do not want to write a letter that ends "and I noticed it and everything was better."

The pattern does not usually get untangled by insight alone. You can see exactly what you are doing and still keep doing it. What breaks it, most of the time, is a moment of decision that has almost nothing to do with the sport and everything to do with what you want the shape of your life to be.

At some point, if you are honest, you have to answer a real question. Do you want to be doing this thing, or do you not?

Both answers are honorable. If the answer is you do not, if the fear is bigger than the appetite, or if you have arrived at a season of life where this horse or this sport or this level is not what you want, that is a completely honest answer, and you can move on without shame. There is no requirement to keep riding through a wall.

What is not tenable, and what all of us know is not tenable, is the middle. The endless conditional deferral. The horse standing unridden while the story about the conditions keeps updating. The equipment being blamed while the appetite quietly dies. The saddle catalog being scrolled while the mare loses her canter fitness.

The middle is the state that lies about what it is. It calls itself preparing. It calls itself being responsible. It is often actually fear, or grief, or a decision you have already made but not admitted, and it will eat the sport and the partnership if you let it.

The way out is not more discipline. The way out is one honest sentence, said to yourself, in whichever direction is true.

Or.

Either of those is a life. The middle is not.

Astrid, still

Astrid and I got through it, for a while. That is a true sentence and I want to say it, because most of us do, and it is worth knowing.

I would like to tell you I had one clean insight and the pattern dissolved. It did not. What happened was that I said the honest sentence out loud one afternoon, in the barn, only to myself. I said I was scared and I was going to work her anyway, and the day was not perfect but I did not need it to be, and we did some very limited work on a windy day with lots of traffic, and it went fine.

I have gone back into the pattern with her since. It is not a state I have permanently exited. That is the honest version. Awareness is the tool, and awareness is not the same as cure. You get better at noticing, and you get better at asking yourself the honest question sooner. The pattern does not go away because you understand it. It goes away, if it goes away at all, because you keep answering the question and keep doing the thing.

And doing the thing, under the conditions you actually have, is the whole point.