Faster Horses

Henry Ford is attributed as saying "if i had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses". The lessons of a man who changed the world resonate not only in the echelons of corporate success but at the bump and grind level of normal lives too. I look back over a lifetime of striving for a better life and now I can see that all along there was another way.



I'm a photographer. I have other skills, more profitable ones even, but for now the camera is my connection to the world and people in it and thus commands my attention. The lens has yeilded me lots of very fast horses - and a few very slow donkeys. I love those short legged chubby little hee-haws and their stubborn ways. They remind me of myself. But they go places that even the fastest horse wont go. They work and toil in the narrow streets of medinas, they trudge across dry rocky plains laiden with bricks, and they plod up and down steep and trecherous mountain trails to get their owners safely home. Someone recently told me that a mule is a horse that is part donkey, and an ass is a donkey that is part horse. So it seems that even in the realm of equine similies things are not black and white.

I have lived a life accustomed to the horses and their fancy ways, and it's hard to slow down. Horses like to travel well worn paths. They like routine. I too find it hard to give up what I know and divert off into the wilderness. Who will fill my feed bag with yummy treats and give me a nice dry roof over my head at night? To be honest I'm not even sure the life of a donkey is for me anyway. So if it's time to let go of the faster horses then what next? A smelly internal combustion engine doesnt seem like the answer either. Maybe I need a boat?