Perspective Changes Everything—Learning through equine vision

Perspective is a funny thing. It decides whether a moment feels like a disaster or a lesson, a burden or a gift. The moment itself doesn’t change—we do. We tend to label our experiences, then that decides how we should feel about them. Today was a bad day.

It's one of our most automatic flaws. That approach to life makes it impossible to learn.

This year I decided to see my world differently...rather than assume any perspective, I'm seeing everything as information—without the label. It's been life changing.

How Horses Experience The World

Lately I’ve been studying horse senses more in depth, and it surprises me just how differently they experience the world through sight. What they can (or can't) see clearly, how they process light and movement—it’s a reminder that every creature, human or horse, walks through the same world but experiences a different version of it.

When you stand beside a horse and look into those enormous eyes, you can see how they are taking in everything. Their eyes are among the largest of any land mammal, set wide apart to give them a near-panoramic view—about 350 degrees. That wide-angle vision lets them spot danger from almost any direction, an evolutionary gift to prey animals.

But there’s a trade-off: only a small slice of what they see—roughly 70 degrees right in front of them—is seen by both eyes at once. That means their depth perception, the ability to judge how far away something is, is far more limited than ours.

And still, we ask them to jump over ditches, cross bridges, and navigate complex patterns over poles. We expect them to interpret the world through our eyes, when their reality is more like two separate screens playing side-by-side, with surround sound.

The colors they see are also quite different. Horses see blues and yellows clearly, but reds and greens blur into muted shades. The world to them is softer, gentler in tone—less vivid than ours, yet filled with motion. They’re very sensitive to movement; a flick of wind through grass, a shifting shadow, or a scrap of paper tumbling across the arena can catch their eye in an instant. It’s how they’ve stayed alive for thousands of years, but it’s also why that bit of trash you barely notice can send your otherwise calm horse instinctively leaping sideways.

And then there’s their adjustment to light. Horses take much longer than we do to move from darkness to brightness and back again. Imagine walking in the dark and being blinded by a flashlight—it’s the same for them going from dim barns to bright outdoors, but a much longer adjustment period. So when we ask them to load into a trailer or enter a shadowy indoor arena, they aren’t being stubborn; they’re navigating a world that literally disappears from sight for a while.

It’s easy to laugh at their reactions—their sudden spooks at harmless shadows, their hesitation at the same corner of the arena they passed a dozen times before. But what if they aren’t being silly at all? What if they’re simply experiencing two sides of the same world? The right eye sees the shadow for the first time, even if the left already made peace with it. The right and left perspectives don’t automatically share information. To the horse, it’s a brand-new experience.

They are constantly processing limited information from two different perspectives. And somehow, they learn to be calm in a world of visual uncertainties.

And that’s where the lesson hit me. We like to believe we see the full picture, that our version of reality is the one and only. But what if, like the horse, we’re only seeing half the story? What if there’s another side of the same experience that looks completely different depending on where we stand—or which “eye” we’re looking through?

Two Ways to See the Same Thing

I’ve noticed that in life, there’s never only one perspective. We can choose to see an experience as unfair, unlucky, or painful—or we can reframe it and find something worth learning. Same event, completely different ride.

Psychologists call this “cognitive reappraisal”—the ability to reinterpret a situation in a more positive or constructive way. But long before psychology gave it a name, horses were demonstrating it every day. They learn to reinterpret things that once frightened them. The scary tarp becomes a simple object; the trailer becomes a gateway to new places. They don’t change how they see the world—they change their interpretation of it.

Humans can do the same, though we’re often slower to get there. When I look back at the highs and lows of my life so far, I can see how those chapters led to unexpected growth, new paths, or deeper understanding. I would never want to relive some of those experiences—but I can recognize what they gave me.

The challenge is that the shift in perspective usually only comes long after the storm has passed. What if we could bridge that gap? What if we could learn to see both sides of the same experience while we’re still in it?

Learning to See Like a Horse

Imagine the horse again, walking through a large shadow. The left eye has seen it before; the right hasn’t. The horse hesitates, snorts, maybe sidesteps. We call it spooky. But the horse isn’t being difficult—it’s gathering information. It’s learning to interpret what it sees.

A good trainer supports a horse through that process.

What if we supported our own fears and frustrations that way? What if, instead of judging ourselves or forcing our way through it, we paused long enough to realize: maybe the part of me that’s scared or defensive is just seeing something from one side. Maybe I can reframe this as important information. Maybe I can learn to understand myself or others better in this situation.

To be clear, perspective isn’t about pretending everything’s fine. It’s about holding both realities at once—the fear and the curiosity, the loss and the possibility—and trusting that, over time, they’ll come into focus.

Reframing for a better experience

The horse has one small advantage we can borrow. When it lifts its head, the field of vision changes. The two screens overlap, and binocular vision kicks in. Suddenly, depth appears. Things make sense. The world sharpens.

Humans can do the same—but not just with our eyes. We can do it through awareness. When we step back to see the bigger picture, we access new clarity. We can see how the good and the bad, the comfort and the challenge, all exist in the same frame.

Maybe that’s the quiet wisdom horses have held all along: that clarity doesn’t come from control—it comes from perspective and interpretation.

So next time life throws you a spooky shadow, take a breath. Remember how horses process the unknown. Maybe your left eye already understands it. Maybe your right just needs a moment to catch up.