The People Whisperer

My plans (which change about every six hours) were to head back east on Thursday. To fly to Atlanta and drive up to Murphy and pick up Roxanne and head back to my city.

So I got up this morning with this on my mind and this is what I found. A new tropical storm, expected exactly over Atlanta at precisely the time I was planning on landing, driving up through the mountains and heading back to Murphy.

I expect it's not too much of a surprise to people that I decided to change my plans.

Then... later today I had lunch with my good friend Jim Callahan, who proposed a whole new way of looking at the way my life has gone for the last 40 days.

He suggested to me that perhaps my experience was a lot like the training of a horse.

He said that the way you work with a horse is that you prevent it from moving in the direction you don't want it to go, not with anger or force, but by simply standing in the way. You do that again, and again... until when the horse goes where you DO want it to go, you give it its head and let it run.

What happens from this process is that the horse learns that doing the right thing (as it were) is its own decision and it becomes capable of acting on its own in the way you want it to act. At least that's how I understand it from within my world of absolute equine ignorance.

What Jim suggested was that, like the horse, when I find my way, everything will suddenly open up and it will be - to mix metaphors - smooth sailing.

Frankly... despite my religious tendencies and my sense of a generally faith based reality, I find the whole idea of being directed in such a manner to be a little creepy. At the same time... I'm damn ready for some smooth sailing.