Earlier this week I had an incredibly touching conversation with one of my teachers from high school, and I have been thinking about it since.

She asked me if I thought I had missed out on things due to the huge amount of time I spent riding horses during high school. My answer boiled down to: yes, I probably did, but that was perfectly okay with me. I had bad knees during high school so most other sports were out because they involved running or too much movement, I lacked coordination necessary for many of them (and did not particularly want to improve that either) and I generally preferred horses to everything else anyway. By the time I entered high school, horses had already surpassed ballet, basketball, flute and fiddle for extra-curricular time commitments.

I spent most of every summer at the barn, barely seeing friends from school and attempting to dodge family vacations because I would miss time with the horses. When I totaled up hours of activities for college applications, I was spending about twenty hours a week at the barn. Now, in university, I have kept riding nearly every day, and even when I don’t ride, I still go out to the barn.

Even though riding has clearly taken up basically all of my free time, I have very few regrets about that. It is an incredibly worthy endeavor, and one that builds real-world skills. One of my answers for my teacher was that with all the other things teenagers could get into, horses seem like a very solid alternative. Another thing that we both found true about riding was that it teaches you how to take criticism in an incredibly adult way. Trainers rarely sugarcoat things, so when they critique your ride, they are telling it like it is.

However, that criticism is, hopefully, quite separate from their opinion of you as an individual, and that is a hugely valuable lesson. For those who like scientific evidence, there is now actual research supported by the German Equestrian Federation that suggests “horse riding builds character and promotes social development.” The study found that overall riders “were generally more determined, enthusiastic, structured and balanced than their non-riding counterparts.” I think most equestrians would wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

Although I could carry on about the benefits of riding for an indeterminate length of time, it really comes down to the fact that anything that can get you out of bed in the morning, excited to face the day and do things—even difficult or scary things—is something you should stick with and devote time to. Not everyone is lucky enough to find something they can be passionate about, so if you have, it is certainly worth keeping hold of.

So I would argue that yes, as long as it really matters to you, it is indeed worth it to spend such a great deal of one's time on something such as riding.