Horseracing, Gossip Girl and John Updike: On Loving What You Love
It started when I was nine, when I fell off a horse, couldn’t get back in the saddle and needed a new way to love the animals I had grown up with. It started with grainy YouTube footage of Secretariat winning the 1973 Belmont by 31 lengths on a balmy June day, a day that has a chance to repeat itself every year, which is part of the mystery of it all, part of the breathlessness. It continued with a book about the same horse that I still read before I go to sleep, because it still speaks to me.
It also started with a tease.
Every class in grade school has a “horse girl. “ It’s a term we use even now–juniors in college–to describe that one chick who was absolutely obsessed. The horse girl is awkward, unfunny, and way too into her hobby. Usually she rode in her backyard. I didn’t, but I still fit her prototype. I can rattle off all the Triple Crown winners in order by their Belmont time. Certain races have moved me to tears. Can’t remember a horse girl in your class? Point your arrows at me.
The horse girl joke is one that stems from our collective inability to let people love what they love. Big claim, I know–but think about it. When was the last time you ever openly listened to Ariana Grande on the train, or expressed support of your favorite losing sports team, or proudly talked about an intense conversation with a professor, without preparing yourself for at least a sarcastic bit of ridicule from your closest friends? When was the last time a typical college friend group didn’t get off on playfully mocking each other in the group chat, usually over something someone loves that doesn’t fit the mold of acceptability?
The answer is rarely.
I don’t know when it became uncool to obsess over things that others don’t care about–or even things that a huge group seems to care about. Millions of teenage girls were just as ridiculed for screaming over the Beatles as they are for fangirling over One Direction. Not allowing people to love what they love is not a new phenomenon, but it is a harmful phenomenon. It represses a natural human instinct to share with others–to communicate interest in something, to display affection for a sport or band or tv show or popular food trend. It reduces what we love into tasteless, packaged and contrived obsessions. It makes us less proud of the things that speak to us, because we believe these things speak to everyone else who loves them in the exact same way, a way that is somehow unoriginal and unimpressive. Your preferences come to define you. It’s unfortunate that some deem their preferences better than others.
Two weeks ago I was nervous to say that I was reading Secretariat before bed–because it was a nerdy thing to be reading, harkening back to the joke, revealing the horse girl I am. (Meanwhile, the person I told about the book is never afraid to express his love for coding or his fascination with economics. Another friend, who I’m sure will be editing this essay, will wax about any number of issues about which he has developed passionate opinions. They both accept that I am the weird horse girl. I take a little inspiration for this piece from these two proud obsessers.)
Fantastic conversations with both of these people, and many others, have encouraged me to be more open about loving what I love. So what if Secretariat is a nerdy thing to read? Have you ever read Bill Nack? His syntax makes my pulse race. Have you ever seen the races he describes with such vigor, such reverence, that they come off the page, because he too is in love with an animal that transcends time and space, an animal that horsemen still exalt? Bill’s love has made him a tremendously successful author and journalist. He is the most lovely speaker. He can make someone who has never seen a horse race believe in the timeless power of the sport that has brought both man and animal to their knees. I want to be a writer who makes my audience feel things as Bill does. I want to be that talented, that moving. And I think it starts with loving what I love, and being unashamed in my love.
I’ve been graced with a special ability to fall head over heels for things that are weirdly susceptible to mockery–everyone loves to joke about how I can quote Gossip Girl without even looking at the screen. I can talk about John Updike’s Olinger Stories for hours because if I had to pick a man to have dinner with, Updike would be my choice. I have New York Times articles that I revisit every once in a while just to take the writing in again. Maybe my ease with obsession comes from my OCD, my persistent anxiety over trivial things, my penchant for nostalgia–maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired. Journalists make careers out of obsessions that let us pour our hearts into covering stories and presenting them to the people. But you don’t have to be a journalist to obsess. You should just go with your love wherever it takes you. It will lead you to be a better person.
That’s a grand statement, too. How does obsessing lead you to be a better person? Loving pumpkin spice lattes won’t end world hunger. But we can’t forget that some of the greatest visionaries the world has ever seen were relentless obsessers. I hope if Albert Einstein was ever mocked for loving physics, or Winston Churchill for loving diplomacy and pragmatism, or Chris Martin for scribbling song lyrics in his school notebooks, that they grew from their experiences. Obsessing makes you more human, more unique, more real. The way you obsess over your great loves is different from the way anyone else loves the same thing, and the way you obsess lets you better understand your own mind. We should never apologize for being passionate–even if it earns us loving derision in the group chat. If you love watching the way a Thoroughbred moves over the ground, if it stirs something in you, watch all the old footage you can. Go for it. Be passionate. Through passion we are more aware, more thorough, more in-tune with who we are. The obsessed have the power (and probably a responsibility to use their obsessions for good instead of evil, but that’s a different story). I think it’s time we collectively realized this idea.
Bill Nack published Secretariat over thirty years ago. Shortly after the horse’s death, he published a longform article entitled “Pure Heart” that can be accessed in the Sports Illustrated online vault. This one article, one of my purest examples of how obsession can help better a craft, a sport and an individual, hangs on my childhood bedroom bulletin board, because I’ve been idolizing Nack since I was twelve. In “Pure Heart,” Nack recalls standing on a patch of grass in Kentucky, watching an aged Secretariat graze right before his death.
“I remember wishing that those days could breeze on forever — the mornings over coffee and doughnuts at the truck outside the barn, the hours spent watching the red colt walk to the track and gallop once around, the days absorbing the rhythms of the life around the horse. The gift of reverie is a blessing divine, and it is conferred most abundantly on those who lie in hammocks or drive alone in cars. Or lean on hillside fences in Kentucky,” he writes. “The mind swims, binding itself to whatever flotsam comes along, to old driftwood faces and voices of the past, to places and scenes once visited, to things not seen or done but only dreamed.”
Nack’s love seeps through his prose. It’s not just about a horse–his words are a reflection on love itself, what it means to look back and realize the best days of your life are already behind you, and thank god they were spent loving something unashamedly. Without fear. Nack’s love made his career, but it also made him someone I aspire to emulate. That’s why everyone should be free to love what they love. If you can let your mind bind itself to things you see in real life, and then in your dreams, you should. Let it wrap around your obsessions and turn them into fuel for expressing your values, beliefs, loves. You could wind up the next Bill Nack, or Albert Einstein, or any of the people who changed our world because they couldn’t stop until they found answers, totally swept up by what they believed in. So let yourself be the horse girl. Look where it could take you.
