Later this year I am slated to teach a series of unmounted (not-in-the-saddle) horse barn lessons. We’ll look at how horses see, hear, and feel differently from humans, learn what an un-mucked stall can tell us about our horses, and compare human cognitive capabilities with horse minds. Maybe. If a bunch of six year olds sign up, I’m not sure what material I’ll present, so I’m asking the other instructors what their favorite ground lessons are.
The first response I got was, “Just ask your students, ‘Can you do nothing with your horse? Can you stand quietly for two minutes beside your horse and not fuss, not walk on, not start braiding the mane…? Horses stand quietly with each other by the hour. Can you do the same, and what do you learn from trying?'”
Grace explains how horses see
My first thought was: Erm, don’t think I’ll start with this exercise… Then I tried it, and realized that the compulsion to lead that horse around, to give the horse neck scratchies, to talk to the horse, was nearly overwhelming, BUT part of that urge is just because I am in a horse barn. I strongly, strongly associate a horse barn with getting stuff done. I am there to make a contribution with my effort, not to improve the landscape by impersonating topiary. Muck that stall, lead that pony, put away that tack.
If you asked me to just hang out with a horse in a loafing shed or in the pasture, I’d probably be more able to coast in silence simply because the venue changed.
I strongly associate creative mental activity with my writing chair, and the only place I have ever written books is at my kitchen table (with a few hotel rooms thrown in). I read in bed to wind down–nowhere else. I visit with friends in restaurants at lunchtime. Without ever meaning to, I have assigned certain functions to certain places. As a kid, I 
was marched off to Our Lady Victory Church for mass every Sunday. I am sad to say that fifty years on, I still associate churches with that place where you are bored, you sit on hard benches, and you try not to squirm or talk for an ETERNITY. Church = a place for physical, social, intellectual, and emotional discomfort at all once.
The strength with which I associate places and functions leads me to ask: So, Grace, where is the place for grief, fear, or anger? The answer might be…in my eighteen year old Prius. I drive in silence, and usually over familiar routes, and without company. In that situation, the harder emotions have room to surface–I realize that I am still pissed about that guy who cut me off at the Safeway, or that what I’m calling anxiety is really fear generated by current 
events. Oddly enough, the inside of my car is pretty untidy, and full of a lot of “just in case” stuff, like spare clothing, bottles of water, tools, fix-a-flat, and reusable grocery bags.
And this brings me to the question that stumped me this week: Where do I celebrate? Where do I rejoice? When I am luminous with joy, what place do I gravitate toward? I haven’t come up with an answer–flower beds are celebrations for me–but if I don’t have a place suited to celebrating, why not, and what am I going to do about it?
What places do you associate with joy?
PS: Watch for pre-order links for A Gentleman of Modest Ambitions, Lord Julian’s twelfth mystery, scheduled to publish at the end of May.
Joy is at the top of a nearby mountain. Joy is at the beach edge. Joy is on my terrace, surprisingly.
This is a cool thought experiment!!
A harder place to find is my place for sorrow…
Yeah, we don’t allow much of that sorrow stuff… unlike the Victorians who worshiped sorrow. Some Victorians saved for years so their funeral would be a proper send off… what was THAT about?
I will give some thought to where my sad place is. Thanks for the nudge.
I like this question!
I associate my kitchen table with joy…family, friends and good food to celebrate birthdays, holidays and good times.
I find joy on my beach walks and watching the birds from the back deck.
And I celebrate joy each morning with Greg as we watch the sun rise!
I like that my kitchen table is where I write, but growing up the dining room table could see a LOT of drama. Lots of feasting too, but also some spectacular parental tantrums, and more than few juvenile meltdowns. The kitchen was where good talk-talk happened while cleaning up and doing the dishes, which my mother left to her offspring (and rightly so).
Another great post highlighting the differences among people. I can’t think of any place I associate with joy. But then I can’t think of any place I associate with any other specific emotions. I’m more of a “where I’m at is where I’m at for this.” Wonder what that actually says about me (but probably not enough to really investigate it).
I realized years ago that I get inordinately attached to places. When I was a kid, having to spend summers on the West Coast was devastating. Summer is when I could ramble in the woods for hours, read for hours behind a closed bedroom door, go make a dam in the stream… to leave home for the whole summer was wounding. I did not worry about missing friends or neighbors. I worried about missing the woods and the cats.
I think any other kid would have been delighted to spend summers “at the beach.” Nah me. I wanted to be HOME, and that is still my happiest place.
I am luminous under an open sky with my husband next to me. I am luminous on the sofa, with my dog’s chin on my knee. I am joyful when the bassline of a new song hits just right, and I can groove in the passenger seat and not worry about where we’re going or whether I look silly to my life partner. I am celebratory in the same places where I grieve my hardest, I think because both require enough space and time for me to open up my little walnut shell in order to take the feelings out and let them breathe.
Hope you’ve been well, Grace. <3 I’d love to order the new Bad Heir Day books on Ingram Spark?
Yikes. Will get on the Ingram Spark sitch. I might be waiting on a coverflat, but I suspect not. I suspect the coverflat arrived and I got to focusing on Lord Julian or Christmas, or, or or…
Thanks for the ping!
The west coast was home for me and joy was often at the beach…. not the sand beaches, but the rocky ones where low tides left pools of critters and storms dumped logs, trees, and sometimes critters, too. I don’t live there any more, but it’s still a wonderful memory. We were at Mom’s at Christmas in an airbnb overlooking the water. It still sparks joy.
But joy for me is a spark, not a flame, so there have been sparks in libraries, in bookstores, in a perfect cup of coffee or a well-cooked meal. There have been sparks at church, at concerts, on road trips to nowhere. I do not get them in grocery stores.
Does the inside of a book count as a place? This has always been one of my happy places as early as “Ramona the Pest”, “Encyclopedia Brown”, and “Nancy Drew”. These days my joy can be found in any work by Burrowes, Balogh, Laurens, and a few others. Alas, reality is always there when you get back!
I don’t really associate emotions with places. Maybe it’s because we’ve moved a fair bit. I do feel a happy dance coming on if we’re in the car on a road trip. Travel is a joy.
I find joy literally everywhere. Because I now look for it everywhere. I especially feel it when I am in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Watching a good baseball game in person. Marching in a Mardi Gras parade. I didn’t use to feel joy often and the darkness would be overwhelming. But I got tired of being unhappy. When I would look for the good, I would eventually find it. Now I focus on the light first and my day passes with a positive vibe. Everything isn’t always rosy but there is more positive than negative in my way of thinking and I focus on that.
What places do I associate with joy? I always associate joy with food, preparing and sharing food, especially, though eating ranks up there as well. Therefore, few places spark more joy in my life than my dinner table, having family or friends sitting at my table, enjoying food that I have lovingly prepared. When good food spurs lively conversation, life simply doesn’t get any better than that. Stay safe. Stay well everyone!
I love to eat, so buying groceries at Trader Joe’s is my happy place. I only get to go there when I’m travelling, and I love getting special treats that I can find nowhere else.
I also love to read in bed in the mornings now that I’m retired. I turn on the electric blanket, get a warm mug of hot cocoa, and snuggle up to a book for an hour or two. Such a great way to start my day!
Lying in the sun reading used to be one of my favourite happy places, but now that I’m older, my skin isn’t overjoyed being out in the sun, so sadly, that thrill is gone.
Joy for me is when I’m wrapped up by my two daughters in a hug. So not a place, but people. But also, you can’t go past sliding into a freshly sheeted bed that stills smells of sunshine!
When I feel joy I recognize it as a precious moment and try to stay with as long as it lasts. Sometimes I can recall the moment and feel the feelings. I become still, I think focused inward on the memories. Don’t have a place as far as I can tell.
Maybe because my family moved so often when I was little (7 times in my first 9 years), feeling and dealing with my emotions is less about spaces and places for me, (though after that I have become quite attached to my own long-term home). Or maybe it just became limited to one place, my own bedroom and bed, with a view of some greenery outside.
For me it’s mostly books, and my cat, that help me with feeling and dealing with my emotions. On gray winter days it’s bliss just snuggling up in bed with my cat, my book and knitting, and the bright sunlight lamp on to dispell the gloom.
It used to be just talking about stuff with my mom (when she was alive), anywhere we could be together without a lot of other people around. Now I sometimes have such conversations with my best friend.
Both books and talking with mom and petting a purring cat work for all kinds of emotions, as I don’t tend to react wildly.
Despite all the early moving, I seem to be built on a fairly even keel emotionally, and some quiet space tends to be enough for me.
I fall into the category of needing to find something to celebrate.
I’m still coping with retirement (worked 43 years), and am still not used to staying in one place (mostly) instead of going into the office 5 days a week. You would think that over a year later I’d have found a better routine, but not yet. Overnight travelling is out: I have 13 cats and a dog to take care of. One of my friends recommends finding classes I might like through one of our local colleges. I’ll consider it although I spent 6 years in college when I was in my 20’s, and I didn’t see anything in their offerings that appealed.
I may try to find a church and do some volunteer work.