Sometimes You Just Need to Let Go

Me Risking Life and Limb in Tucson AZ in 1984

During my  “cowboy” phase, while living in Arizona, I decided to try my hand at rodeo. I made up my mind to do bareback bronc riding.

This is where a rider gets on a horse (or bronc) whose only desire is to buck the bronc rider off.

With only one hand, the rider hangs on to a “rigging”, which is a handle, like on a suitcase, attached to a leather strap strapped around the horse.  To hang on, the rider wears a glove  that fits tightly into the rigging handle, secured with resin (sticky) powder. The goal is to stay on for eight seconds.

I practiced for a while on a wooden sawhorse with a rigging attached and two buddies at either end bouncing it up and down. Thinking I was ready, I went to the practice arena one night and paid ten bucks for my chance to ride a wild bronc.

My legs felt like jelly as I lowered myself onto the horse in the chute. I  jammed  my gloved hand into the rigging. Out in the arena, the pick- up man waited on his horse. The pick-up man’s job is to rescue the rider from the bronc after his eight seconds.

I nodded my head to signal that I was ready. The chute opened.  Eleven hundred pounds of horse rocketed into the arena with 130 lbs of  me  attached to it.

About 3 seconds too late, I realized that I had no business being on that horse. I was getting tossed like a rag doll in a clothes dryer.

The pick up man, seeing that I was a lost cause,  rode up next to us on the right. I started to climb onto his horse. I got half way there with one leg on when he yelled “Take your hand out of the rigging!”

In all the excitement, I had forgotten to take my left hand out of the handle of the rigging. My hand was stuck tight with resin, on the other horse, all nice and cozy, the way it was supposed to be.  Except now, it wasn’t supposed to be.

All I could do was climb back onto the bronc. After a few more bone-rattling bucks, I got my hand free and he gleefully sent me flying.

After I got all the dirt out of my mouth, and with some sense pounded into me, I decided to do horses a favor and end my rodeo career.

Sometimes you just need to let go. 

The past year is just about gone. Soon a new year will come. Things come and things go. That’s life, isn’t it?

But sometimes, caught up in the excitement (or routine) of life,  we forget that we are still holding on when we should have let go a long time ago. We can end up being dragged along by our involvement, shaken to and fro by our choices, or being owned by our physical and psychological “stuff.”

As hard as it might be, there are times when the best thing to do is let go and get off.  This is how you make yourself available for a new ride. This is how you allow new, (maybe better) stuff to come in.

Are you aware of something that needs to be released from your life, now?

• Material things you don’t use or need
• A job
• A relationship
• A desire  (like trying to ride horses that don’t want to be ridden)
• Guilt or regret
• A tradition
• A belief
• A habit

At this time of the year, trees shed their leaves as Nature prepares to create anew. Why can’t you?

Ted

To listen to a podcast of this blog, go to www.tedmoreno.com/ted-in-your-head episode 39