Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Unleashing the green broke horse in each of us!

What is a green broke horse?
It basically means fresh. A green broke horse is a newly broke horse that has just learned to be ridden. A green broke horse is never a good horse for a beginner.
So my question is, is there not a green broke horse in each of us?
And is that green-broke-ness not part of what the world wants to "tame" in order to be able to "ride" without worrying about being "bucked"? And in those places where we do not wish to be tamed, are we not, individually and assertively, declaring our individuality?
We all know that parents want a child, from birth, who is gentle, quiet, sleeps through the night, smiles when smiled at, gains weight at the prescribed and documented rate, shows an apgar rating of nine or better, and never refuses to do what s/he is told!
Move it forward about four or five years, to the classroom where most teachers want the child to be a little curious, a little mischievous, but mostly quiet, respectful of teacher and classmates, obedient, well-mannered and growing in the normal, documented and empirically measured scales of memory, problem-solving, artistry, socialization and physical co-ordination.
What is happening to the "green broke horse" that is inside each child?
It is being tamed!!
Take the child to church, to Sunday School, to Catechism, where s/he will learn that "good" little boys and girls do and don't do specific things....because God does not like them if and when to do "bad" things....and here is another large "dose" of training to tame the green broke horse inside.
Enrol the child in secondary school, and watch the change as the child watches and learns how to dress, how to talk, how to laugh, when to laugh, how to dance, how to tweet, how to bully, how to "please" the teacher, when to make fun of another....mostly of those green broke horses in the class, in the halls, in the cafeteria who do not "fit" with the norm....they are the geeks, the nerds and they are also the green broke horses that are taking much longer to "tame" or to "train"..depending on the perspective of the observer.
Following graduation, there is often some kind of registration in a post-secondary institution when and where, depending on the program selected, further "taming" and "training" takes place. If it is a nursing program, the student learns that the doctor is "in charge" and that there are protocols for each and every situation that must be learning, adopted, integrated into one's professional behaviour, belief system and acculturation. If the program is in engineering, a similar set of premises, protocols and standards is learned, adopted, tweeked perhaps a little for individual preferences and absorbed into the world view of the student, almost by osmosis from the instructor.
Similarly in medicine, law, accounting, biology, physics chemistry, and even music and art...there is a kind of modelling the masters, learning the vocabulary and learning the technical requirements of the instruments, the voice, the theory and ultimately the performance....when, if one aspires to professional performance, it will be time for the green broke horse to assert itself once again, in the interpretation of the manuscript....
Only, in many of the academic disciplines, the green broke horse is silenced under the weight of the mass of material to be mastered....leaving very little time and place and thereby opportunity for any green broke-ness to emerge.
And then, out to the job frontier...where the people in charge are expecting that all the previous experience and training ("taming") has "taken" and there will be no further "disturbances" from the now-tame and dependable horse.
Only trouble is, through all those lectures and labs and experiments and essays and tests and examinations and tutorials and seminars and athletic and artistic rehearsals, the tiny voice of the green broke horse has never died, never atrophied and never been infected or affected by the training or the taming.
And it is the "green broke horse" inside that gives each of us the hope that we do have a spirit, a uniqueness, and "unbreakableness" and place deep inside which can never been either analysed or destroyed and which also needs the kind of respect it needed when, first, it was noticed that all of the training "did not take".
And when one reads the words of people who "know" horses, one reads phrases like "it will take a long time and a lot of hard work to train (tame) this one, because he is still green broke"....
And in the world of people and schools and corporations, there is no one willing to spend the time, the energy and the patience to "train" or "tame" the green broke horse in each of us....and so, what do we do?
We ignore the reality, we deny it, we cover it with accomplishments and achievements that will pass for "taming" and training without actually paying full attention to its power to break through whatever boredom, or anaesthetic-like experience we have to endure, when we least expect it.
If we were all to give voice to our green broke horse, one wonders at the capacity of the respected, professional and mature society to cope with such a choir of green broke horses...all in need of, but deeply and profoundly refusing, the full "ponty" of the taming/training that we believe in our hearts would render us emasculated, eunuched, sterile, deaf and dumb.
And is there not a reasonable and cogent case that can be made to celebrate and to love the green broke horse in each of us, so that we do not succumb to the disease of conformity and mediocrity and passivity and somnambulance and even becoming etherized behind the wheels of our BMW's, as we move easily through the traffic on the freeways, on our way to our offices, our labs, our Operating Rooms and Emergency Rooms, and our Court Rooms and our Board (Bored) Rooms?
We have collectively and subtly collaborated in a sacralising of the professional, the expert, the guru and the trained and tamed perceptions as if they were expressions of our best. And yet, is the green broke horse in each of us not  waiting to be re-discovered, from under the layers of dust, and decay and atrophy that have grown over its whinney and its break-free spirit to roam outside our corral, outside the earshot of our tamers and trainers...and the plethora of parents all of them seeking to control our acts, our thoughts, our beliefs and our wills?
Could be!!!


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