How to Ride a Dead Horse

- Meditation -

I am from Kentucky and in Kentucky we take some interest in horses. My experience comes from watching and helping my dad raise and train Five-Gaited show horses as a young boy.  Regarding horses, I heard once - I don't remember where - that the tribal wisdom of the Lakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in our personal life, in our work life, and in our mental, spiritual and emotional life, we sometimes try to ride a dead horse. That is, we follow strategies that have never worked, don’t work now, and will never work. I’ll share what I mean.

First, a personal life example: Several years ago, in an effort to help her get organized; I would buy my wife, a purse-size day planner calendar set. She would faithfully put it in her purse and, for the whole year, never use it, except to write grocery lists. My frequent and persistent efforts to suggest that she would be better organized if she would use it properly were never viewed as helpful nor were they appreciated. Then, when I would cross the line and she would be tired of hearing my “helpful” encouragement, and I would say, “But sweetheart, why don't you just....,” she would say, in true Kentucky fashion — “Larry, don’t get on that horse!” And you know, she was right. IT WAS A DEAD HORSE. IT HAD BEEN DEAD FOR YEARS. But, I would continue to saddle up, mount up, ride up, then speak up, only to be told, in her sweet and sassy way…….."shut up!”

In our work & business life I have seen organizations corral a whole herd of dead horses, mount up, and pretend to ride off in the direction of progress. I mean that they would religiously follow unworkable plans and unproductive processes. Stories abound of companies whose failures and fall where made on the backs and in the saddles of a "dead horse cavalry." 

Whether a manager, secretary, worker, or supervisor, we all have seen it and perhaps been part of this dead horse cavalry.  Along the way we tend to develop a number of strategies for riding a dead horse. You have no doubt used one or more of these. I’ll share some with you that I discovered somewhere and to which I have added a few. Sorry, I don’t have the source:

1. Buy a stronger whip.

2. Threaten the horse with termination.

3. Appoint a committee to study the dead horse.

4. Arrange to visit other stables to see how they ride dead horses.

5. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included in statistical reports.

6. Reclassify the dead horse as living impaired to qualify for being ridden.

7. Harness several dead horses together to increase power and speed.

8. Hire outside a contractor to test-ride the dead horse.

9. Do a pilot study to see if lighter riders will improve the dead horse’s performance.

10. Declare that the dead horse carries lower overhead & therefore contributes more to the bottom line than other horses.

Clearly, none of these measures work. After all, THE HORSE IS DEAD, and when this reality is faced, the final decision becomes clear:

11. Promote the dead horse and its rider to a supervisory or executive position.

These examples are perhaps humorous, but riding a dead horse in our mental, emotional, or spiritual life can have serious consequences.  For example, we sometimes allow our persistent patterns of unproductive, even unworthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to go unchecked, unchallenged, and therefore unchanged. These dead horses have a name; they are Self-deception, & Self-betrayal.

Alfred Lloyd Tennyson wrote sadly, yet majestically, of a "dead-horse cavalry" who charged bravely yet blunderingly forward: “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.”

In the Bible, the Old Testament tribes of Israel wandered 40 years in the wilderness because they were figuratively riding spiritually dead horses.   In the Mormon faith, the Book of Mormon is itself, a history of two cultures that either sought after the living water of truth, or rode themselves to destruction on the dead horse traditions of their fathers that were not correct.

Paul in the New Testament teaches of those who continue to ride spiritually dead horses and who refuse to put off the natural man, and become a “new creature in Christ.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17) They, instead, seek after their own understanding and thus, spiritually speaking, ride dead horses into dark and forbidden paths.  These examples are seriously sad, for riding a dead horse in our spiritual life can have serious and eternal consequences.

As we ponder our own lives, are there old destructive and unproductive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that have gone too long unchallenged?  Are we ready to dismount?  After all, even on a dead horse, the saddle can feel comfortable – familiar – safe, and we can delude ourselves into believing that we are moving forward.

As we travel the pathways of life, may we learn to recognize a dead horse when we see one and, if we find ourselves in the saddle, like the Lakota Indian tradition, be wise enough to dismount. 

Larry Doyle Crenshaw