The Power of the Herd. Linda Kohanov
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highly adaptable, intensely social, nonpredatory perspective on power into a human context. In becoming more horselike, my students too began to thrive, finding the courage to follow their dreams and honing the skills to manifest them.
As newspaperman Walter Winchell observed, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Working with horses taught me how to move fluidly between practical, earthly existence and that strange, amorphous other-world where the as-yet-unimagined hovers, waiting, always waiting, for someone with the nerve, endurance, ingenuity, and charisma to coax the formless into form. This is how we change the world. By the time Rasa left me in 2011, I had learned to manage the stress, confusion, and significant emotional distress that anyone saddled with a vision is bound to encounter. In fact, if I were to mythologize the trajectory of Rasa’s life, I would have to conclude that she hung around, quietly tutoring me, even carrying me at times, until I gained a more sophisticated view of leadership and could be trusted to walk the path without her. In this sense, I was lucky to have a horse to not just hold me up but cheer me up too.
Artists and innovators invariably suffer for their visions, a cliché we’ve all heard before. But recognition of that classic pattern doesn’t lessen the impact of feeling misunderstood, used, hurt, shamed, blamed, degraded, and betrayed along the way. Knowing the sacrifices and intrigue involved, who would sign up to live the life of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Martin Luther King Jr., regardless of the colossal shifts they set in motion? In long-term projects, inspiration all too easily gives birth to a rowdy set of twins: obsession and depression. The energy of the first can carry you through any havoc wreaked by the second, it’s true. But I know the price this kind of power exacts on a human body. Pushing yourself year after year, stretching the limits of personal health and well-being in service to a demanding vision, is like plugging your living room lamp into a 220-volt industrial socket, day after day, and blaming the lamp for burning out. Without any previous training, innovators must learn to negotiate their own individual human needs within the supercharged agenda of inspiration and calling.
In myriad sanity-saving ways, my horses taught me how to deal with the drama and exhaustion. They exercised the courage, compassion, patience, and equanimity I needed in order to face the next round of challenges. They showed me how a herd could be a source of strength and creativity, not compliance, disempowerment, and suppression. And they exemplified a mind-set capable of navigating change, even tragedy.
Deep Peace
Many people assume that prey animals live in a state of constant fear and hypervigilance. Spend enough time around horses, especially those who haven’t been traumatized by abusive handling, and you realize this isn’t at all the case. Horses don’t stay up all night worrying about lions, and they certainly don’t manufacture trouble in order to control the ensuing drama. Secure, well-adjusted horses collaborate with fate. Instead of fixating on what should or shouldn’t happen, they sense what is happening and what wants to happen. Then they decide whether the developing situation is in their best interest, and they either go with the flow or get out of the way.
Horses don’t try to alter the environment, spending much of their time in a relaxed yet heightened state of awareness, ready for anything. As a result, they’re masters at assessing the evolving nuances of reality, deftly avoiding that human tendency to distort reality by engaging in wishful thinking or focusing on the worst possible outcome. For leaders, adopting this expanded, nonpredatory perspective creates an advanced capacity for risk management: paying attention to the subtle dynamics of a situation gives people a leg up in evaluating what they can control or change — and what they can’t — early enough to grasp an unexpected opportunity or avoid being eaten.
No matter what happens, horses exhibit exceptional emotional agility: They experience each moment openly and authentically, blazing through fear, power, pain, excitement, loss, playfulness, and unmitigated joy. And then they go back to grazing, spending a significant portion of each day milling languidly about in a state of deep peace that arises naturally when you’re not afraid of life.
Sitting quietly with Rasa, breathing in sync with her mindful acceptance of each and every moment, entrained by the beat of her massive heart, I always felt a sense of calm engulf me, no matter what trials I might otherwise be enduring. This in itself was a daily miracle. Her presence, however, was powerful, not passive. Horses, she taught me early on, actively respond to how people show up each day, highlighting our hidden gifts, our wounds, our vulnerabilities, and our worn-out worldly habits. And yet somehow they manage to be discerning without a hint of judgment, communicating that, at the core, we too are beautiful, powerful, and wise, capable of endless renewal.
Looking through the eyes of my horse Rasa, I came to see human dysfunctions as surface scintillations, dramatic and sometimes irritating to be sure, but certainly not set in stone. Whenever I managed, through grace or sheer stubborn will, to let go of an old pattern and embody a fresh perspective, Rasa would mirror the transformation, welcoming me home to an even deeper understanding of who I really was. And without the slightest hint of ambition, she would continually up the ante, stretching, relentlessly, my own limited ideas about my place in the world, my calling, and my untapped potential, helping me become a more effective human, one capable not only of dreaming big dreams but of riding a vision with a destiny of its own — and encouraging it to outlive me.
The view from eternity, after all, is clear: Pleasures and obstacles come and go, but the call to build something of lasting value cannot be denied. If people are “made in the image of their creator,” then human beings are designed to create. And those who accept the challenge of creating something truly remarkable, something imbued with a touch of the divine, aren’t given mortal excuses, reasonable timelines, and voluminous bank accounts. I can’t think of a single visionary who won the lottery to support a brilliant, socially significant idea.
Struggle is a part of innovation, there’s no doubt. It helps to know this up front, especially when the initial high of inspiration gives way to the realities of manifestation. But it’s also important to realize that we can experience peace on earth, deep peace, right here, right now. Horses do it every day. People all too often ignore this crucial, life-sustaining factor, reducing heaven to a deferred reward. Perhaps that’s why Gaudí hid out in a pauper’s ward after regaining consciousness, waiting for the end rather than fighting against it. Floating in the pure white light of a wider perspective, he was honored; he was inspired. And he was tired. Without a dose of horse wisdom to calm his mind, cheer him up, and carry him through the inevitable stress, his was a religion of turmoil, sacrifice, and strife.
He had no choice but to suffer for his art.
Mass Transit
Anyone who applies logic to visionary leadership is sure to blow a major fuse now and then. There are way too many paradoxes involved, countless pairs of opposites you must juggle artfully, sometimes while in your underwear. Gaudí’s skivvies were held together with safety pins. His meals often consisted of lettuce with a bit of milk sprinkled on top. He was a very cranky guy at times. These are the kinds of facts that history books record if you do something significant. And the analysis that follows would be humiliating to a man who refused to have his picture taken. Was Gaudí pious, anorexic, accessing altered states through starvation, or so distracted by the details of creating a massive monument to God that he couldn’t be bothered with thoughts of food, clothing, and social niceties? (I suspect the answer is yes to all four options.)
Selfless dedication to a calling results in behavior that appears alternately selfish and eccentric to family and friends. Part of the inevitable crankiness stems from trying to listen to your muse over the din of skeptics who don’t believe in what you’re doing, while you learn to set appropriate boundaries between yourself and people so enraptured with your vision that you’d never get anything done if you accepted all their dinner invitations. Of course, in Gaudí’s case, a good meal now and then would have helped. It’s hard to function when you’re obsessed, overworked, and starving. But even while dining with wealthy clients, the architect rarely strayed from a daily vegetarian regime so strict that most people would consider it a form of fasting.
The willingness to relinquish personal comfort in service to a goal is so common among