Horseness

Consider a horse. Everything that makes this horse a horse, and not anything else, its each unique trait, attribute, feature, or behaviour, whatever you call it, can be considered a theoretical concept. In the book?Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author calls this?horseness. Even if every horse on earth disappears (and I certainly hope this doesn't happen), the theoretical concept of horseness would still remain.

This is where I would like to extend this concept further.

Even if the theoretical concept is separate from a physical horse, the reason most of us are aware of the concept of horseness is either because we have met a few horses and have formed our opinion of what horseness is, or we are aware of horses from literature or movies and so on. The feeling of having understood horseness is much more profound in case of the former, compared to the latter.

While every horse might feel that there isn't anything special about itself that makes it a unique horse, for anyone that meets this horse, their opinion of what a horse is, and horseness itself, could be primarily derived from such a horse.

For a certain period in our lives, we all might feel that there is nothing about us that is different from other people. But, over a period of time, we get to a point where we understand that some things that we have considered usual or normal are not so, and that they are part of what makes us unique. Every such unique trait of ours might not itself be unique among the billions of people on earth, but the combination of all these traits might most probably make us unique.

Some of these traits exist in us because we feel closely associated with it. For instance, let's say you like playing the harmonica. You might not be the greatest person on earth to ever have played the harmonica. You might feel that you might not even be good at it. But many people around you might know a few details about what a harmonica is, and how it can be to play one. For many people, playing the harmonica exists as a concept only because they know it through you. And besides playing the harmonica because you like to, being the flag-bearer of this concept for people around you can be a huge reason to continue with it.

And so it is with any trait that you closely associate with. Identify your horseness, and continue to horse around.

Time to get off my high horse now, but not before I leave you with an unrelated comic strip about horses: https://xkcd.com/1720