When Time Stops

By Sydney Eck / Fall 2025

In the thick of Covid, I enjoyed a casual, much needed sunny day outside grazing my horse. The grass was lush and green, post rain making it perfect for the horses to eat. It had not yet become weeds but it was tall enough for them to get giant mouthfuls to satisfy their after ride treat. That quickly escalated as situations happen faster than you can blink with horses. Before I knew it, I was laying in the dirt with my horse galloping back to her barn. I was convinced right then and there I had broken my hip. I mustered up the strength to hobble back to the barn to process the situation and get my horse back into her stall. It took almost a year to figure out a diagnosis from my fall which was entirely too long. I wondered what I would do without being able to ride and the answer was nothing. The fall that flipped my life upside down taught me that transcending moments don’t happen in movement, but stillness.

Through countless X-rays and MRIs I was finally told I had a herniated disc which was the root of all my agony. When you are just sixteen that does not mean much when you cannot understand the volume of the situation. I had one thing lingering in the back of my mind and that was getting back to my horse and riding because a void was creeping up. I did what I was told, got my cortisone injection and my six weeks of physical therapy. Yet I was still at square one with pain that was so intense it made five minute car rides impossible. We hit the end of the road and my last option was surgery. I knew this would be my answer but would it forcefully take horses away from me? Post surgery, I was told I was unable to ride for a minimum of a year despite me begging every chance I was given. Doctors are not ones to bend the rules which I discovered alarmingly fast. The very thing that had fueled the fire in my life was now swiftly taken out from under me like a rug being pulled out from under my feet. I remember thinking, how could I not ride? How do you come back from a year of not riding? What do you do if you cannot ride again? I distinctly recall pleading with my surgeon to let me return to my same level of riding. He hit me with words that haunt me as he brutally reinforced I have everything to lose from riding and nothing to gain from it.

Post surgery, the trips to the barn have shifted in what they look like. They resemble doing absolutely nothing. I open the tack room, where the aroma of leather floods through my nose. I simply glance at my saddle as it sits collecting dust, while I envision myself lifting it onto my horse's back. I just peek at my horse's bridle which is perfectly wrapped and cleaned resting on her bridle hook. I do not have to touch a piece of tack to know how soft the leather is and perfectly molds whatever it is on. My boots are slumped in the corner, broken in and so molded to my leg that they would not fit anyone else. My horse stands with her head in the aisle watching me do nothing. It is weird going from a hundred miles per hour to a complete halt. The law of physics states that if you crash going 100, your body is still moving at 100. I felt that way with my heart and what I wanted, yet my body was like the car that stopped moving a while back. My friends were not doing nothing; they were loading horses onto a trailer getting ready for the next horse show. No one teaches you how to do nothing around horses. I have always been taught the importance of making my time efficient. Sometimes you are handed a list with fifteen horses that need out and a mountain of chores. You have until the sun goes down to get it done. Not this time; the list had vanished and I sat on the mounting block twiddling my thumbs. It is sort of ironic; the place that I could not imagine doing nothing at, became the best place for me to do absolutely nothing. I realized how much I have passed by when I am in a constant go mode at the barn. The afternoon silence at the barn became so filling and comforting. The horses' whinnies sounded different; the clacking of the horses walking across the concrete became louder. There's a Ted Talk called The Art of Stillness, where the speaker, Pico Iyer states, “In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still” (Iyer). I felt a new sense of urgency to sit with my horse the minute the automatic gate opened for me into the barn. In a sport where time efficiency is so heavily emphasized, I reflect: have I missed the urgency to slow down and appreciate what I had right in front of me? I will say I thought I was someone who was incapable of doing nothing but only being allowed to do nothing has truly changed my outlook on life and the sport. I live in a time now where everyone is so deeply intertwined with the internet and these small mobile devices. I caught myself being the opposite at the barn. I’d set my phone down the minute I got there which often led me to forget where I had set it when it was time to leave. But I slowed down and I started to find the nuance in the things that I had passed by. Such a dangerous animal was so innocent and detailed when you actually look.

There I sat, in between the rails of my horses pipe corral with her standing right in front of me. We would stay like that for hours, just sitting, occasionally exchanging some one sided conversations. She would just stare at me with these big brown eyes that I could see life reflected through. I always wondered what went through her head as we sat together doing nothing but appreciating the comfort of each other's presence. As time went on and our routine became sitting together listening to the birds that play in the bushes outside her stall, I realized we both truly appreciated doing nothing. But we both appreciated doing nothing together. A Laozi quote from Tao Te Ching impacted me as I sat between her coral day after day, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” (Tzu). My horse was nature, and she has this comforting energy that comes off on you that slowing down is okay. Is the importance of winning and showing just simply pushed upon us because as humans we find more value in that? It’s not just the horse industry that stresses utilizing your time in an efficient manner but also modern day society.

For one, I live in a society and I participate in a sport that emphasizes the importance of time efficiency. To add to that, in a sport that makes a point of getting things done fast I have noticed that maybe my horse is the one that pays the price. While sitting and doing nothing but looking at my horse, I have come to learn a lot about her in the simplicity of doing nothing. John Muir stated once, “in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks” (Muir). I was now receiving far more from my horse on the ground than I ever did on her back. I received it in life lessons. Every summer to winter transition my horse gets a small little white stripe on her left nostril. Something so small, I really have become the only one to notice. It is an indicator that she is telling me winter is here through the slight changes in her coat. But small changes like that were not just about her appearance but about life. Life does not have to have big changes to realize the little things.

Covid happened, and it disrupted many of our lives but her coat still changed letting me know in a small way it would all work out. I have come to realize society has left out a lot of things that comfort us. It is now our little phones that provide comfort while we spiral. Have we lost ourselves? They say dappling means your horse is happy and content in their life. Does the phone buzz of a notification indicate our happiness or is it simply something we have been trained to find pleasure in. I reverted back to being younger when I stood on a stool and fiddled with her hair. I didn’t have a phone at the time, I got dropped off and got picked up when my parents could make it back. I have a phone now and yet I never find myself reaching for it. The buzzing could go off a million times and I do not find myself sucked into the societal norm of obsessively answering. Jenny Odell herself said, “In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock...” (Odell, 61). We have been absorbed into checking our lives on devices like clock work. I have been granted the unique life lessons many of us may be missing as we continue to spiral down the hole of obsession.

My horse was no longer my partner, she became a teacher of life. My time of doing nothing with her became my resistance to the hyper-control we as humans demand we have. I do not know what she is thinking, what she will do next, it is simply out of my control. She has taught me to let go of the obsessive control society has pushed onto us. The strict time frames were all subjected to, the typical nine to five and an hour for your lunch. Obsessively checking our traffic directions to see how the time is altering because we all have more important things to do. We have these little devices that slide perfectly into our pockets yet the notifications and buzzing has dominated who we have become. In an article based on how humans are evolving into an astonishing lifeform it is stated, “in developed countries, we spend on average 6-7 hours a day glued to a screen of one kind or another. That’s roughly one-third of the total time we’re awake. And every one of those hours is spent connecting in some fashion with other humans, whether communicating directly or consuming content other humans have created” (Haseltine). The screens have changed humans, we all expect to get an immediate answer the minute we send a message. We have been conditioned into scrolling and waiting for responses because being inefficient isn’t an option. My horse has given me something no college professor could ever teach me. Things happen how they will happen. Sometimes letting go of that control can actually show you more to life. I truly have no need for a device when I am with her. I have an urge to just look at her and observe and watch. There's no anxiety that rolls over me as the sun starts to move positions in the sky as time passes by. I truly am not productive or efficient when I am around her and yet I feel as if my time is endless.

She’s taught me patience in a way that I will never be taught from my everyday life. She is a prey animal her natural instincts are fight or flight, often being flight. I can’t simply force her to obey because that's what I want, she communicates subtly. Force makes things a whole lot worse for us when we are trying to connect. I used to make mistakes when riding that directly affected her. She was patient, she allowed us to try again and allowed me to learn no matter how long it took. It was my turn in the wake of doing nothing. I sit and observe her because something as small as her ears being positioned differently could indicate something huge. I am not given that instant gratification my phone delivers when someone likes my instagram posts or comments back to me. Nature doesn’t move in modern day time. I developed the patience from doing nothing with her. The patience she has taught me is not one I believe you get from working with kids. It is a form of mutual understanding and trust. I am a kinder and more forgiving person because of her. I watch her as she stands in the middle of her pasture, doing nothing. Just standing and looking, I sat beside her outside on the rail. When I get up and walk along the rail she just trails behind me like we had lived this life before together.

So to say, I have realized I am not exactly doing nothing. I am in my own way shaping a quiet resistance to societal standards. Where results are expected instantaneously, our productivity is measured every second possible and yet sitting here doing nothing but observing her in nature feels so radical. The shifting of her weight from one tired leg to another, the pinning of her ears, and the softness of her eyes are lessons that cannot be rushed. I lose whatever urges me to rush to my phone for a response. I no longer have a desire to fill every second with a task or live my life on a strictly perfectly planned calendar. In my act of doing nothing, I resist the pressures from society to turn me into a machine. I have slowed down to appreciate the moments that have gone unseen.

I often wonder that if we all had an outlet to do nothing would we resist more of the forces that pin us down to be machines? Is what we need to have society pan out differently the resistance we all lack? The lessons I have received from the silence of doing nothing from my horse I am confident are lessons you will not find in the modern system. Her stillness is something no math class or economic class could ever define with numbers. I have reclaimed my attention to see exactly that. My identity with my horse has grown, I am not just a rider or her owner. I am her student who is simply trying to reverse the programming society has conditioned me to have. As her lessons have taught me unlearning the expectations of the world, I carry them beyond just the barn. They have become integrated into my life showing me I can live at a different speed than everyone else.

As we both do nothing, I have realized she is more happy living her life slowed down as am I. The gift of patience and the ability to slow down have allowed me to absorb nature in a new way. Even if the world stopped spinning I know everything would remain the same with her.

The practice of doing nothing and doing it with her has added color where I need it considering life in modern day society can be very dull. I finally think I have started receiving the benefits of being around equines that people seek. Ronald Reagen, a horse man himself once said, “I've often said there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.” (Reagen). I frankly think he was onto something. I catch myself seeking the barn to relax and to unwind as I navigate my first quarter away from all comforts I have ever had including my horse. The unwinding has made me smell more and be more present in the environment I am in. Some people simply chalk horses up to smelling dirty. For me the barn is filled with the smell of timothy and orchard hay that have a distinct grass smell. The horse cookies have such a sweet smell and soft texture it almost lures you in to take a bite yourself. A fresh bag of pine shavings smells like the christmas tree you set up every December. When I take my shoes off afterwards at home the shavings stuck in my shoes bring the nostalgic pine smell home with me. Doing nothing has been an absolute privilege.

In the thick of it all, my horse has taught me that the time I spent doing nothing has not been wasted or vacant. In a world where how fast you get something done, how much you can get done, and the constant buzzing of our phone, I have been taught new life skills. I have been taught the patience and resistance to the hyper-mobility we face all through the simple act of nothingness. My horse has granted me her understanding that life isn’t constrained by time and that letting go of obsessive control does not mean things fall apart. Every minute I have spent observing the small details of her and the nature that engulfs the barn has taught me something no professor I ever come across will. Because to learn it is to genuinely practice it. In the stillness of doing nothing, I have resisted the demands of society and have grown a deeper sense of peace, understanding, and connection. The lessons from doing nothing will continue to follow me through new journeys of life.

Works Cited

“Humans Are Fast Evolving into an Astonishing Lifeform.” Psychology Today, 2025.

“Remarks to Citizens in North Platte, Nebraska.” Ronald Reagan, 2025.

Odell, Jenny. “The Case for Nothing.” 2019. The Garden In the Machine. Compiled by Professor Niall Twohig. University of California San Diego, fall 2025, pp. 61.

TED. “The Art of Stillness | Pico Iyer.” YouTube, 26 Nov. 2014.

Laozi. and Stephen Mitchell. Tao Te Ching. Frances Lincoln Limited, 2009.

“John Muir Quotes - John Muir National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service).” Nps.gov, 2022