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The Lipizzaner Stallions were in town recently and enthralled three young boys and, less so, an older sister during their appearance at Albany's downtown arena. (May we still call it "the Knick?")

The show featured a dozen horses and riders performing the controlled and stylized jumps and other movements known as the "airs above the ground." A ringmaster narrated the acts and ably engaged us in the history of the Austrian horses, though with a dose of schmaltz.

The breed was developed in Spain after 800 A.D. and brought to Vienna in the 16th century by the Hapsburg nobility. The horses were favored for use in battle as well in fashionable riding schools. In Albany, the stallions pranced, leaped and sidestepped their way through various maneuvers.

The show entertained, to a point.
An adult observer, or even a shrewd child, could only wonder how much the white stallions enjoyed being made to perform awkward movements not seen among horses on an open range. Learning each move took years of training, our narrator told the oohing and aahing audience.

A florid imagination quickly seized on the possibility of "Lipizzaner Humans," perhaps put into harness by some alien master race in a sci-fi movie. Green Martians with elongated heads armed with riding crops would make us jump along on one leg or snap our arms at the elbow in bizarre angles to entertain other space invaders.

Or perhaps we have achieved this status on our own. We don't need Martians to do what we already do to ourselves.

Most of us in our modern, technological society fit ourselves to the harness constructed of the demands of work, peer pressure, materialism and ego. We strap ourselves into the 2,000 pounds of expensive automobile we must have with the pricey cell-phone jacked into our ear. We dress in uncomfortable shoes and attire to stride down the airless corridors of our office buildings on our way to meetings no one wants to attend. We adjust our natural rhythms to those of email, video games, TV shows and jobs. We fit ourselves to the machine.

Maybe we exaggerate.
Still, the discomfort brought on by the Lipizzaner show was a reminder of the contortions we impose on ourselves and our fellow humans in order to get by professionally and socially.

We pace on a treadmill, going nowhere, as CNN blasts away on the television instead of going outside for a walk or jog in the natural world. In troubled times, we hearken to the mutterings of investment gurus instead of the more obvious truths of our religion.

Instead of heeding common sense in human relations, we adopt the latest platitudes - "paradigm shift" or "quality time" - from the corporate-therapeutic world.

Some of our masters can come from within. We can be controlled by our passions and desires even as we present a respectable exterior to the world. In adhering to certain physical or mental authorities or routines, we can be like trained bears hopping along on hind legs as a trainer snaps a whip.

Thankfully, our Catholic faith offers us a constant lighthouse by which to steer our vessel. As Paul warned the Romans: "Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God."

(10/23/08)[[In-content Ad]]

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