Years ago, after losing my business, my home, a couple of rental properties, my business partner and mate, a big IRS debt, well, everything, I decided to pack what I could fit in a borrowed car and drive from Portland, ME to SF, and try and start over. I also saw this as a bit of a last hurrah before I would need to really hunker down and to put back the pieces of my failed life, and attempt to create a new life. So, I spent 7 weeks on the road.
I stopped and visited different friends along the way in several different states. I visited a couple at their place in the Tennessee mountains. They had formerly been my tenants in Maine while he had been interning there as an ER doctor. My heavily packed car barely made it up the mountain to their beautiful contemporary home, with amazing views! They couldn't have been more hospitable to me, but I was filled with resentments about the turn of events in my life, and yes, admittedly, I cannot deny my feelings of bitterness and envy at the extent of how my circumstances had changed, as compared to their lifestyles then.
The wife had a registered Saddlebred horse stabled nearby and she took me to the stables. I have always been a horse person, having my own horse when I was young, and loving them from a very young age. I loved everything about them, the way they looked, the way they smelled, their strength and of course their humility that they could be so patient with a young person who could be quite reckless at times.
The stables were impeccable, poop cleaned up almost immediately. The horses, with some kind of contraption to keep their ears up and tails wrapped to keep them held up, literally looked down their noses at me as we toured the stables. The owners I met seemed as superficial as the horses, at least to me. I saw myself as on the edge of homelessness, and although I didn't actually envy these horses for their captive lives, on some level I did. I thought being pampered and taken so well cared of might be a better alternative to my uncertain future, and I was actually outraged at the disparities between wealth and poverty. Yes, I recognized this disparity while in my own state of impoverishment. This was 1989.
I managed over years to crawl back up out of that place (with the help of many mentors and good Samaritans along the way) and live a fortunately comfortable life compared to so many others in my age group now. So, perhaps the biting disparities don't bite as deeply as they did then, now that I am not living quite so close to the edge today. Seeing this photo posted by someone today, brought all this back up, and is a reminder to never lose our anger and disgust at the unnecessary disparities between the wealthy and the impoverished, because we never know when it will happen to us. And it never had to be this way.
And, of course, it's not the Saddlebred horses' faults!