The dash

That we sadly lost equestrienne Jan Catherine Sy reminds us about the many facts of life, including the sport she embraced. With so much to live and work for at 29, the granddaughter of a retail tycoon succumbed to sepsis.

She reminds us that equestrian, more known as horse back riding, unwittingly pioneered sports inclusivity. It is one of the rare sports where men and women compete against each other on equal terms. Too inclusive it is the only sport human athletes summoned a member of the animal kingdom for mutual dependence and athletic excellence – the kingly, imposing horse.

Conversely though, it is elitist and exclusivist, too expensive a sport for the rich and famous to share with athletes who could not afford a horse and maintain it. Horseradish maybe, picked with presumed consent of a neighbor in slumber. What irony, the horse humanizes its financially immortal riders who may never do a household chore or menial work discordant with their privileged lifestyle.

Humbling, but the rider born with a silver spoon hand feeds the horse, callous-free hands and manicured nails handle manure, sheltered in a mansion straight to the stable as second home to bond, immerse and establish mutual trust and respect. The horse doesn’t work with a stranger.

Which brings back to memory the beautiful, well-bred Mikee Cojuangco who gracefully jumped to individual gold in show jumping in the 2002 Asiad, on a horse she treated family who returned the favor and made her solitary female gold medalist alongside Paeng Nepomuceno and RJ Bautista in bowling doubles and Francisco Bustamante and Antonio Lining in billiards 9-ball doubles.

More than anything, Catherine’s demise reminds us of our mortality regardless of status in life. The conglomerate heiress didn’t lack for money to best medical care access. But no matter the wealth or poverty, everyone expires, sudden or slow, including those terminated by agents paid to protect life and liberty. Like birth, death is one of the rarities that equalizes human race. Suffrage does too, until poverty made it a commodity exploited by the power hungry who recoup via thievery.

No one asked to be born, exactly why we were meant equally entitled to all natural resources, until private ownership took them away from the many and concentrated on the greedy. Equal from womb to tomb, but different in how we live, or are made to live, the gift of life. Many made bad choices that taught them lessons. But for so many more who are deprived of choices, there is nothing to learn from, except that life is not fair. Not because it is, but because others made it the way it is.

We were born to a world disorder where the best staple is served on the table of those who neither prepare nor hunt nor grow them, the land we stand on is owned by a few. And now the water we drink is bottled for sale. Next up is clean air to the highest bidder. Basics in life that should have been free and shared equally, until humanity invented religion, money and politics that divided us all.