Think of life as a horse you are sitting on.
It is taking you in a direction where you probably don’t want to go. Sometimes this horse knocks you down. Sometimes it runs at a pace not so amicable for you. Or too slow. You are up there holding the reins, but it does not feel like you are in charge of much at all.
Or maybe you are not even holding the reins. Maybe they have been hanging loose this whole time, and you just assumed the horse was yours to steer because you were the one sitting on it.
I was talking to a friend yesterday about the challenges they were facing, and this is the closest I could come to making them understand. They kept coming back to the same question, the one most of us know. Why doesn’t life work in our favour?
Here is what I told them.
When the horse won’t go our way, we look at others to handle it for us, to take control of it. They seem so sure. They seem to know how this works.
But they are already handling their own horse. Its own moods, its own speed.
They cannot ride two at once.
And even if they reach over and take your reins for a while, where will they take you? In the direction they are going. Not yours.
So now it is tough for them, and you are not happy either. You are being pulled down a road that was never meant for you.
And you can feel it. This is not my path.
I have done this for years. I looked at people who seemed so certain and thought, they have it all figured out, and I don’t. I think we learn it early. As children, we gather information about how to live by watching the adults around us—how they speak when they are angry, how they handle money, what they do when something breaks. And we never quite stop. We grow older but still look to the other to behave like an adult, to manoeuvre our lives for us.
The trees do this differently. Each season has a purpose, and the trees shed their leaves to bring in the new. The tree does not argue with autumn. When it is time, it lets the leaves fall. We, humans, are not too keen on shedding the past. We hold our old leaves tight—the old hurts, the old stories, the old versions of ourselves—and then we wonder why we feel so tired.
The truth is, nobody can ride your horse but you. Not because the people around you don’t care. My love me dearly, and still, they could not do this for me.
Your horse only answers to you. It knows your weight, your hands, your fear.
And taking it back does not mean riding away from the people you love.
It is the opposite. When you are steering your own horse, and they are steering theirs, your paths can finally meet with ease and joy—two riders going somewhere together, instead of one dragging the other off course.
So take the reins of your horse in your hand—the ones that have been hanging loose all along. It needs patience and understanding to align the horse, the direction, and yourself. It does not happen in a day. You learn when to hold firm and when to soften.
The horse will still surprise you. Mine still does. It still runs too fast on some days, still stops for no reason.
That part does not change.
But you change.
And that is enough.
You don’t need to ride it perfectly. You just need to stop looking around for someone else to do it.