Last September, a friend sent me the following story by email. I share this with the reader to help with the process of self examination.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In modern education and government, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:-

1. Buying a stronger whip.
   
2. Changing Riders.
   
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
   
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
   
5. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses.
   
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
   
7. Re-classifying the dead horse as "living, impaired".
   
8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
   
9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
   
10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.
    
11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
    
12. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
    
13. Re-writing the expected performance requirements for all horses.
    
14. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

How many dead horses do you have in your life?
Is you relationship a dead horse? Both of you know that it is dead but no one has the strength to bury it and move on. So you keep dragging carcass around. Weeks turn in to months. It is now years since you have laughed together. All that has happened is that you have just got used to the stench. You have forgotten what happiness feels like.

Is your job a dead horse?
This is not what you had in mind. You cant stand the people that you work with. The days are getting longer as the nights get shorter. It's time to go back to the place that you hate so much. You work-to-rule all day and worst of all you are now bad mouthing the company outside. Remember what ole time people say, "yu kyan stay pon cow back and cuss cow". It's time to move on.

This is one of the main challenges of life, knowing when and how to fold. Knowing how to gracefully let go. We call this "constructive disengagement". Life is dynamic. Things begin, they also end. Learn to accept and embrace change. These are some thoughts to encourage the process.

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
- T.S. Eliot

It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
- Elizabeth Kenny

No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
-Charles Kettering

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
-- George Bernard Shaw

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

If you have made mistakes...there is always another chance for you...you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.
-- Mary Pickford

The world steps aside to let any man pass if he knows where he is going.
- David S. Jordan

Sitting still and wishing makes no man great. The good Lord sends the fishing but you have to dig the bait.

- Unknown

It doesn't matter how often you get knocked down; what matters is how often you get back up.

• Vince Lombardi

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death.
- Earl Wilson

Be absolutely determined to enjoy what you do.
- Gerry Sikorski

If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake.
- F. Wilezek

We have enough people who tell it like it is - now we could use a few who tell it like it can be.
- Robert Orben

Embrace your uniqueness. Time is much too short to be living someone else's life.
- Kobi Yamada

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, but in what direction we are moving.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important
is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant
-Stephen Covey

Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.
- Sylvia Robinson