Confusing Experience with Accoutrements - Part I

One of the reason that I think the Buddhist concept of "beginner's mind" has such appeal for me personally is that once we're adults (or some semblance of them) we can often get bogged down in life by the confusion of the "how to" approach to a new goal, business idea, etc.  This can be anything from losing weight to starting to write a book (which is the subject I'm pondering of late). Starting at the very beginning can feel weird, or perhaps more honestly, boring.  Where to begin when we're no longer complete novices? Where to begin when we feel like we should already know something about the subject?

But if we stop for a moment and think about a time in our lives when we were young and fresh and open we can remember the great joy of learning something new, how very focused and ready a "beginner's mind" truly is. How accomplished we felt because from one moment to the next we went from, say, being reliant on someone else to being able to tie our very own shoes!

As soon as we learn how to do something new however, even as children, there is the tendency to confuse the wonder of an experience we enjoy with the accoutrements, or tools, that can help accomplish it. We can easily go from the thrill of being able to tie our own shoes to deciding it would be more fun to tie the laces on brand new shoes.

As a writer there aren't too many tools I can get wrapped up into for my daily writing needs. Certainly there are a plethora of writing workshops and retreats and classes that I could get wound up in feeling the need for if I wanted to, or I could obsess about types of pens and journals (though mostly I type on the computer). But even if I don't buy into the need for stylish extras much as a writer, I certainly have been guilty of confusing the joy of an experience with the need for the right stuff in order to improve that joy in other avenues of my life.

The recent return of boots styled along the lines of English hunt boots as a hot fashion item reminded me of the first time I truly remember coveting a new accoutrement in order to feel an experience I loved would be made so much better with the right new tool. I was about nine or ten. I had been happily taking weekly riding lessons for about a year, wearing my jeans tucked into perfectly good rubber riding boots, when two young girls my age showed up at our stable decked out to the nine in full hunt regalia. This meant they wore fitted breeches and leather riding boots as well as their velvet hunt caps (which were not covered in a special plastic cap to keep them nice for shows) just for a lesson not for a show. That stopped me up short. Envy bloomed. I recognized not only the inferiority of the rubber of my own boots, but that my boots didn't come all the way up to my knee and they weren't fitted at the top. Oh they looked so cool and polished and professional and I looked so very, well, not cool, polished or professional.

It didn't matter to me that no one at my little river bed stable of "Lucky B" in the tiny enclave of Hollydale CA wore breeches or hunt boots for lessons, or regular daily riding. Not even the older girls who came home from shows with arm loads of trophies, like my own 16 year old teacher Jaime, or So Cal based trainers Stacey Turner and Kathleen Coe. Most wore leather ankle height workman boots because they were easier to deal with. Indeed, Toni Oppegard, the owner of the stable, usually went barefoot (however, this isn't recommended).

But these two girls appeared dressed like the heroines on the cover of the many horse-centric books I devoured and suddenly my rubber boots just weren't good enough. Alas, my wise mother wasn't buying into my longing. Even for my fashion conscious family I was growing too fast at the time to warrant such an expense (if I was in a show a pair could be borrowed) but I remember sulking around for awhile feeling very heart sick about it all.

A few weeks later the two girls decided "Lucky B" was not for them and went off to take lessons someplace else. Like magic my longing for my own pair of leather hunt boots disappeared - for awhile (my boot fetish still continues today).  Chances are that our stable was a little too scruffy for them, however, for myself and the group of people who had the great privilege of learning from Toni's very well respected method of training (much of it based on dressage) we learned the power of a solid foundation and a great love and respect for the horse.

And had I been paying better attention I probably would have learned earlier not to mistake the power of tools for the power of the experience.