Personal responsibility

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

I strongly feel that anyone who makes a choice based on reasonable info 
should accept the consequences, just like they do the rewards.  In a sport 
like endurance, there will be risks.  Anyone involving themselves or their 
loved ones has got to realize that they *chose* to be there - they could 
also have stayed home.  Personal responsibility involves accepting ALL the 
results of your choices.

If you want to be a reporter, you don't blame someone else if you get shot 
in a war zone.  If you want to surf the Great Barrier Reef, you don't blame 
someone else if you get bit by a shark.  If you want to get on a horse and 
ride a long ways in an AERC sanctioned event and something happens to you 
other than getting a completion award, I say accept it as a consequence of 
your choice to be there.  If you can't do that, just stay home.

My mom has always said "you have to pay the piper".  I don't think any of 
us is perfect.  We all make choices that don't always have the results we 
hope for.  We all interact with other people who also aren't perfect and 
aren't making perfect choices.  Life is risky.  Sadly enough, too many 
people seem to want to live fairy tale lives in which "risk" only involves 
the good parts, not the bad.

Lif Strand
Quemado NM  USA
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             Lif & Paul Strand  STRAND ENTERPRISES www.fasterhorses.com
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HERITAGE ENDURANCE RACE June 9, 2001 - http://www.fasterhorses.com/race.html