Essay: Work Capacity — Susan M Turner

Work Capacity:

When Will We Set Ourselves Free?

For Seabiscuit and all living things who have ever awaited being understood and for whom safety and triumph may remain elusive.

Freedom is coming. It’s a comin’.

Seabiscuit—that come-from-behind, neglected horse who led a nation through the Great Depression—was an abject failure by normal standards. He was small, stubborn, and unfit for the usual training regimen. In a sport where crushing speed was rewarded, Seabiscuit wasn’t running the same race (Hillenbrand).

“He was lazy,” asserted James Fitzsimmons, Seabiscuit's first trainer, “dead lazy.” (PBS)

Yet, through the care of three men—Charles Howard, the owner; Tom Smith, the trainer; and Red Pollard, the jockey—and through the willingness of another, George Wolff, to set aside his own approach to mastery, Seabiscuit became a legend.

The primary ingredients Howard, Smith, and Pollard appeared to infuse were adequate rest, companionship, a quality diet, and—most importantly—both the ability to understand what Seabiscuit needed and the willingness to give him the freedom to do it (Hillenbrand).

If only the crowds that had watched him then and those who fall in love with him still had realised they, too, are Seabiscuit—and Howard and Smith and Pollard in equal measure.
We are to each other owner, trainer, partner, and legend. (Turner)

Work Capacity: Entry into the Promised Land (Turner) begins with these inescapable ties between us, and redefines them, as it drives us toward a shared vision of the Promised Land—though Turner is quick to point out the Promised Land she speaks of is not the American Dream.

Getting there—the American Dream—well, not everyone has been able to get on the bus. Yet, as Turner points out, everyone—literally everyone—is still here—natural-born United States citizens, naturalised citizens, and hopeful immigrants alike. There is nowhere to go. Wealthy or poor, safe or without security, with or without opportunity. This is our “America” whether we like it or not.

Work Capacity: Entry Into the Promised Land is intended to be an emotive walkthrough of “American life” using work capacity as the lens through which we can find our way. Of course, getting there requires unpacking our white hot freedom from the tight, tripled-wrapped package we’ve placed it in and opening it up to let it run free.

We live in a nation where we clamor for freedom, but no one agrees on what that is. Freedom is not on our mind, for example, when we become inwardly enraged that the colleague next to us is leaving early—again—to pick up her kids. Or when we think “those young people” are asking for too much. Or when we have allowed critical infrastructure, health care reform, and other legislation to languish.

Yet, collectively, we have swiftly and powerfully agreed with each other when the threat has been outside ourselves. Cue the Stamp Act of 1765, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and COVID-19. Kidding about that last one.

Doesn’t it make you curious?

What is it that sits beneath our ability to rally together for an event like 9/11 within seconds but has prevented us from making it possible—even today—for a pregnant employee to not face discrimination when the medical need to sit arises while at work (United States Congress, House)?

Seabiscuit’s first owners had expectations and expected the horse to meet them, which on the surface seems like a reasonable approach until you realise that version of Team Seabiscuit wasn’t the one that made him into a legend.

So when we largely view and treat ourselves, and others, as Seabiscuit’s first owners did, we inherently take a lot of chances: we suppress the opportunity for many champions and increase the opportunity for misunderstanding, mediocrity, and misery.

Image by Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation - Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4917667

Seabiscuit could not have known what stood against him, but his body bore the trials he was initially put through—endless races, poor conditions, and not enough kindness.

We are a nation wanting to do what we want—but we lack both the individual and communal skills, understanding, and courage to ring that glorious bell of true freedom for ourselves and others. We think we know, but our judgment of ourselves, of others, and of circumstances constantly pulls us away from the generosity of true freedom and toward the scarcity of our own needs, the limitations of our own minds, and, often, the very little we think we have permission to ask for.

How can I set you free if I am too scared to ask for two weeks’ vacation in summer? How can you set me free if your manager fired you because your car broke down on the way to work?

I’m also thinking here about the failure of some unlimited vacation policies due to employee anxiety about using them, the companies who are now pulling back Pandemic-enabled remote work for reasons (such as real estate) not related to work productivity at all, and the Great Resignation, for which pundits are already warning employees to leap wisely or not leap at all.

So, which is it? Are we growing strong, capable, quality workers in an amazing country where anything is possible? Or does at least some significant portion of us believe not all workers can be trusted? That there are few ways to do good work? That ultimately the only way to have a competitive business is to measure employees in terms of resource units (cue Seabiscuit 1.0) rather than champions in the making.

If you want to read great examples of what life-changing things can happen when you believe other adults can be trusted, that largely will come in future posts or in the book. But, for now I recommend reading about the results of this initiative from Springboard to Opportunities.

Ultimately, I am not a scholar, an economist, a teacher, or a veteran, which is perhaps what makes it easier for me to be confident that the entryway to true freedom in peacetime begins not with force, nor with strangling work restrictions or narrow definitions of acceptability or success: it begins in the moment of ease when we first come to realize we need not hold tightly onto so many things. We suddenly remember it is through freedom that we actually learn. It begins when we stand on our own piece of ground and build our own happy world—big or small, fancy or simple, known or forever unknown—even while others are sleeping on, dancing on, destroying, or jumping wildly in success on theirs.

This is not to say legislation that protects our rights isn’t necessary. But first, we must come to know and feel at home in the undefined ambiguity of true freedom—where we have unlimited choices, as do others—even those who will make choices radically different from our own, and especially those who only have choices radically different from ours due to their confining or hugely liberating circumstances. In the case of Seabiscuit, all that horse needed was to be seen as he actually was—and to be given the care and feeding his body and soul needed to thrive. Isn’t that what we ultimately want for ourselves?

We must be able to walk the halls of possibility without anxiety, without limits, without judgment—and have want for ensuring all others can do the same. We must surrender not our own hope for a good life but rather any beliefs that someone else getting a benefit we are not getting is wrong, undeserved, or unfair (to us). We must boldly go and keep going to see who we are and what we are meant to do regardless.

Believing this and working to ensure those who have been kept from opportunity due to institutional, systemic, and structural racism, as well as poverty, disability, and combinations thereof, including being of the female sex, can soon reach it means that one day we may finally sing together, “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave”—or, just as likely, sing an entirely new song of our shared choosing.

References

“Biography: Seabiscuit.” PBS, n.d., https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/seabiscuit-biography/.

Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. New York, Ballantine Books, 2002.

Turner, Susan M. Work Capacity: Entry into the Promised Land. Manuscript in preparation, 2022.

United States, Congress, House. Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1065. 117th Congress (2021-2022), H.R.1065, passed House May 14, 2021.

First published 18 July 2022.