What is not seen is the work that needs to be done so you can ride off into the sunset. The constant fixing of fence, trimming feet, putting shoes on the horse, taking shoes off the horse, more trimming, shovelling out the paddocks, cutting hay, picking hay, throwing hay, early mornings gathering horses, fixing tack, fixing vehicles, the list is endless.
This past month I had a few examples of the not so fun stuff of being a cowboy. This weekend I had to move and restack a bunch of my winter hay as I found a bunch of leaks in the tarping. It only took about 6 hours but it was tedious and not how I wanted to spend my 6 hours. My brother took a few weeks off in September and went to wrangle for a outfitter friend of his up in the mountains. It was a 2 week trip with 12 dudes and 30 head of horses. They got snowed in with 70 cm of heavy wet snow and the crew had to work their way out in a very unpleasant atmosphere.
Why am I talking about this? Well in away it is similar to achieving mastery. This is in anything, not just Kung Fu. I hope by now we all have a picture in our head about the kind of Black belt we want to be. It is the work we need to put into to achieve mastery and it can be tedious and boring, doing the same things over and over. But without this, making this part of training as part of the process, we can never achieve mastery or a Black Belt with meaning. It is the work and constant repetitiveness that allows for us to reach Mastery. In my reading those that embrace this part of the process become the true masters. The true masters do the Cowboy stuff.
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