Dmitry A. (SLE) - From a Wimp to Being in Charge

You have to build self-confidence in a child. I was a spineless little wimp for a very long time. But in first grade I started attending a riding school. I had inner insecurity, but fairly quickly—literally by the third lesson—one athlete, a big guy, about eighteen years old, led a horse up to me and said, “Here, take him for a walk.”

A sport horse is a completely different animal compared to school horses. It has temperament, it has strength. I had to walk up to this wild beast, take it by the reins, and walk it after the lesson so it could cool down. And it could feel that a wimp had come up to it—it wanted to break free and run. And right then an enormous sense of responsibility switched on inside me. I realized that if I let it go now, I would never catch it again. It would be shameful, first of all, because I couldn’t handle it, and second, because it would simply be wrong.

I was the one in charge here, no matter how much it tried to break away—and it even tried to rear up on its hind legs. I was eight years old, and next to me this huge horse was rearing up, four times taller than me. I still held it, held it and made it understand that I was the one in charge, even though I was terribly scared.

Those five minutes of walking were pure hard labor—whole years, entire eras seemed to pass for me in that time. I held the horse with all my strength, God forbid I let it go. And then I realized that I could endure all of this.

And the first thing I did after that was stop allowing people to mock me at school. Before that I had been a wimp—that is, a punching bag. The very next day after the incident with the horse, I beat up the strongest boy in the school. I really took him apart; I simply allowed myself to do it. I had always been able to, but there was a psychological block—lack of self-confidence. I knocked him down, beat him well, really well. That’s it.

And the world changed for me. I realized that maybe they wouldn’t respect me for my intelligence, but at least I was no longer subjected to humiliation among my peers. They understood that now they had to reckon with me, and moreover, they would have to reckon with my opinion—and that is worth a lot.