Most of us are just looking for significance. We want to matter, leave our mark somehow. Maybe we want to matter to another person, or to the world, or to ourselves. I think that’s the biggest reason that social media is so popular… sharing ourselves and seeing other people’s reactions makes us feel significant. Like we matter.

But feeling significant and being significant are very different things.

Sidney doesn’t have a FB page. Or a twitter account. Or Instagram. He’s a horse. He carries mentally and physically disabled people to a certain kind of freedom, away from everything they can’t do. Maybe he feels like he’s significant, I don’t know. It’s hard to say what he feels, since he’s a horse. And feelings come and go anyway. They are impermanent emotions to which we often attach too much permanent weight, when we should just let them be and then let them go.

But in what Sidney does for others, because of that physical carrying of other people, he matters. His impact, his mark, his significance will be felt long after he’s gone because of what he’s done, not because of what he felt.

And he left his mark with his hoof for me here in this photo, with the help of Brienne and Swiftsure Ranch Therapeutic Equestrian Center. To me, it’s not a reminder to feel significant at all.

It’s a reminder that love is (not a feeling).