Gratitude: Day Two

Today, I was profoundly grateful for the internet.

I had been asked to do a podcast with my friend Jane Pike on creativity. I’m a bit late to the podcast party, but I’ve been catching up like mad. I love the whole idea, and I love the amazing variety, and I love that funny and fascinating people can put their thoughts out into the world. So being asked to do one was rather thrilling. That the invitation should come from Jane was especially delightful.

Jane works as a mental coach for riders and horse people in general. She’d observed that what was holding a lot of people back with their horses was not lack of technical skill, but the blocks in the human mind. (It’s all the usual suspects - fear, shame, terror of being judged, the committee in the head which tells you that you will never be good enough.) So she started a programme where people could work on those brutal mental blocks. I adore her wisdom and generosity and good-heartedness, and I find that her teaching helps me as much with life as it does with horses.

And this evening, even though she lives in New Zealand and I live in Scotland, we were chatting merrily away about creativity and imagination and authenticity and courage and letting your inner three-year-old come out to play. All through the miracle of the internet.

The truly wonderful thing is that we have never met in life, but I think of her as my friend. We communicate a lot through FaceTime and messages and the general back and forth which the internet makes possible. If it were not for this astounding technology, she would be on her side of the world and I would be on mine, and we would never know the other even existed. The thought of not having her brilliant mind and her rebel sense of humour in my life makes me sad. But I don’t have to be sad, because there she is, on the other end of a line that travels over thousands of miles of ocean and time and space. That is something to be grateful for.

I’m also grateful to my red mare. I’m always grateful to my red mare, because she is so beautiful and comical and interesting and fine, and because she teaches me something every day. Today, though, I’m grateful to her for a very specific reason. Because of her, I have made connections with human beings I would otherwise never have met. This is true in my real life, and it is true in my internet life. She’s been like a little heart connector, busy introducing me to new people and new ideas and new groups. It was because I needed to be a better person for her that I sought out Jane. It is because of her that strangers have become friends.

The older I get, the more I think that connection and love are everything. And because this grand thoroughbred canters about the internet - she has her own Facebook page, as she is too marvellous to be confined to a small Scottish community - she connects me with minds and hearts all over the world. That really is something quite extraordinary. And I am more grateful than I can say.