The Loose Rein

Have you noticed how much of our lives we spend being quietly pulled off course? Once you begin to see it, it is hard not to see.

Yesterday I took Alegria out for an evening ride. We headed out along the dirt road, toward the beach. As we got about halfway, I felt a slight tug to the right and looked down. Alegria had spotted some of her favorite micro-greens along the way and was suggesting we stop for a snack. Now, sometimes we do stop. But it was getting late and we had a plan. So, I gently nudged her back toward the center of the road.

Once we got to the beach there were no tempting snacks, but I felt the same gentle tugging. Oh, I thought, she needs to stop to pee—there is a particular feeling when that happens—so we stopped. But, after standing still for a minute or so, she began to turn around toward home, suggesting maybe it was time to get dinner instead of heading down the beach.

Once again, I gently but firmly guided her back to the "plan"—to head down the beach until the point and then turn around. We continued in this way as we walked through the surf, the sun lowering in the sky.

I was not "forcing" her. Each time she suggested that maybe we should turn around, or maybe we should eat some grass, I simply suggested that we keep going according to the plan. Had you been watching, you likely wouldn’t have seen anything. But it was there in the communication between us.

This morning I sat down in my living room to do my regular yoga practice. When I turned on the TV and began to navigate toward YouTube, an image caught my attention—it was for some new "cowboy" show being promoted on a streaming service. I don’t even have that service, so I couldn’t watch it anyway. I scrolled down toward the YouTube app. Again, another new show came up on the screen, suggesting that I might enjoy it.

I couldn’t help but think of that ride with Alegria.

Have you ever noticed that when you pick up your phone to Google something, by the time you have actually "come back" from reading all of the articles and news and other suggestions, you don’t even remember what it was that you wanted to search for in the first place? 

That tendency is, of course, by design. It is designed to keep you distracted. Designed to keep you heading down whatever rabbit hole that day is offering.

But as with Alegria and the green grass, we don’t need big heroic measures to counter this impulse—just a gentle but firm nudge back to the center of the road, back to the plan, back to the task at hand.

It is so easy for our attention to be hijacked. It is tempted to focus first over here, then over there, and before you know it we are like an ambling horse on a loose rein, letting the algorithms take us where they will, rather than setting out to walk the path in front of us.