Equine

Some people were taught obedience before desire, silence before instinct, kneeling before knowing why they were asked to bow. And then there are the rest of us- the ones who learned motion first. Who ran. Who burned. Who questioned restraint. Who felt freedom in the body long before we had language for it.

This is not a story about years named after animals. It’s a meditation on what happens when freedom is glimpsed early- and how hard it is to live in a cage once you have seen it.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2026 is the year of the Horse. When my oldest kid was small, she begged for riding lessons. I agreed- never imagining the quiet assault on my soul that awaited me. Watching animals born to run toward infinite horizons forced into aimless circuits, metal bits between their teeth, left me with a depression I couldn’t quite rationalize at the time.

It felt the same as visiting the finches in the aviary at work- meant to comfort residents with Alzheimer’s. I looked through the glass as if it didn’t exist, flooded with an unnamed dread whenever someone remarked how much they enjoyed watching the birds flit about. As if any manufactured habitat could convincingly replace the sky.

If birds or horses don’t conceptualize freedom the way we do, does that make captivity more bearable? Do they distinguish between care and confinement? What does freedom taste like to you?

Is freedom the absence of worry? We worry endlessly- about bills, about our loved ones, about work, about time. Is the unhoused person more free than the suburb dweller numbing themselves with overpriced coffee and prescription calm? Or are we all negotiating different cages, convincing ourselves they are chosen?

2025 was the year of the Snake. I’ve shed more than a few identities lately, leaving them behind like dust on the wind. I’ve always been drawn to equine energy- to the unbridled, the untamed. For as long as I can remember, the idea of pursuing unhinged, spur-of-the-moment impulses has lit my hair on fire with an indescribable thrill.

And this is the quiet truth underneath all of it:

Once you’ve tasted freedom in the body, you can’t unknow it. You can survive without it- but you will feel the walls.

Freedom isn’t an idea- it’s a sensation. If you’re someone who learned to run first- this work is for you. Light something. Sit with the part of the you that never learned how to kneel. Let her breathe.