Rage

Driving oxen to control my fear

Rage

It takes a lot of emotional control to drive oxen well. It is important as the leader of a team to not let your emotions take control of the situation. Just like life, when driving a team, the true quality of the teamster comes out, not when things are going well, but rather when they are going sideways. Keeping a steady head under pressure is one of the key traits of a good teamster. You can have the best technical skill in the world but if you can’t keep your cool when things go wrong you will fail.

This is why I continue to drive oxen, because I am not very good at emotional control. As a highly empathetic person who has big emotions I suck at hiding or controlling my feelings. Just ask my family. I can be a touch Mercurial. Quick to anger, quick to laughter, and easily moved emotionally. I have struggled with my anger and my general fear response my whole life. I used to think that I was just an angry person who couldn’t control it. I tried all the “anger management” techniques but nothing really worked. In fact it took me over three decades to realize it wasn’t even anger that I was feeling, but rather fear.

There was some relief in the fact that I was reacting with anger because I was in fact scared but it didn’t make it much easier to control. That is why I continue to work with the oxen because I have found no other way to work on my fear response. When I feel fear I often react with anger. This can be bad and will affect others around me. Especially the oxen. They are mirrors for myself. If I am having an emotional response they will react in the same way. This is where I can see myself in a scary situation.

Driving oxen is all about activation and deactivation. I prefer this language to fear and calm or sympathetic and parasympathetic. Using activation and deactivation takes any value judgement out of the equation. It is simply a stimulus and a response. Activation is a motivating response. Fear can move you towards action but where that action goes is the key. It also works on a dial rather than a switch. One to three is mild but a seven or eight is intense. If the dial gets turned up too much directional control is out of the question. Chaos ensues. When I am working with the oxen I am trying to control their response to a certain stimulus. So I have to be aware of where my own activation is, and clock it on the dial. This way I can turn it up or down but being aware that I don’t want to go too far because at a certain number there is the point of zero control.

Learning to control my response is still not easy but the oxen help show me the way. They are my “one ton gurus.” They make me a better person. I have never had a tractor that makes me want to be a better man. My relationship with my oxen does. I am still not great at controlling my anger but I am getting better every day. Because every day I yoke up my team and get to work.