You won’t believe how bold I am to try to make this all happen. If a person is brave enough to go to war, don’t you think he should be brave enough to go to peace? If you are brave enough to charge into bullets, don’t you think you would be brave enough to meet someone new and ask that person to help make peace?
This past week, February 28th or so, I flew back from Chicago to Kalispell. The plane flew to Salt lake City and I had a two and a half hour layover. I must have talked to ten people during that two hour period.
I sat in an area where several corridors connected. I watched people coming and going. I kept an eye out for what made individuals look good. “The look” is what Maria Callas might have suggested when she was describing how she was determined to have a career. She lost weight and dressed fabulously for her.
I complemented two women and a man on how “together, united, and elegant they looked.” Thee were two women dressed to the nines in tall black dress boots. One even had a snazzy mini fur coat on. She was very lovely, Hollywood quality, and possibly very rich. The other woman was a stewardess. She was dressed in red with a pink scarf and a pink corsage. Her tall black polished boots had towering heels that would have been difficult to work in, one would think. When I spoke to her I found out that her secret was very thick socks that provided padding.
The person I want to tell you about was a woman with dark hair and a somewhat dark complexion. She had her mother with her, I assumed, and child. I can’t remember whether it was a boy or a girl. But she, too, was wearing magnificent tall black riding boots, but they had a golden spur accent on each heel. Very unusual. I hoped that she was an equestrian and someone I could talk to about PeaceHorse. I sat near her in a food mall and eventually struck up a brief conversation as she went by. She was not an equestrian. She had left Iran twenty some years ago and had established a new successful life here where she was studying for a PhD in science. I lamented that we couldn’t talk horses but I suggested that she go to my website PeaceHorse.org and see what she thought of the idea of inviting people from all over the world to ride together, to have fun together, and to learn how to make peace together.
I did not hear from her. I googled her and found her and sent her an email, but alas, no response.
What will it take to be able to get the idea of following your passion and making peace at the same time a foremost goal? In “first world” or “second world”, maybe not the third world, countries, individuals have a chance at doing what they love and making a decent life, letting the money follow.
My poor brother Steve ended up in the family meat packing equipment business running the family company. I don’t think Steve was happy. He died a year or so ago.
I would like to encourage everyone who is not in a survival mode to try to figure out what their passion is (if it doesn’t hurt people) and then follow it, make a living, become an expert, become very good at it or part of it, read everything there is printed about it, write about it, talk to others about it who are smarter and those less knowledgeable than you are, and then do it.
To the lady from Iran, I hope you will stumble upon this blog some day and send me a comment. I bet you have friends who would be great peace makers and who also could become excellent passionate horseman or horsewoman.
Peace, love, and joy to each of you. Tom
Whitey and Joy are demonstrating how satisfying it is to be who you are, to do what you love and make a living at it.
