There is nothing more certain than a lover's enthusiasm; every waking hour spent focused in on fulfillment.
The same can be said for artists, drinking the heady fruit of their craft, the transformative energy that makes a task the most delightful activity imaginable.
But what about dedication driven by need? One sees images of farm workers picking vegetables, for example. Their skills seem effortless, fluid, dance-like.
As someone who used to be a farm worker, I've followed the recent news about 'regular' Americans trying to fill in on Alabama farms now without their regular farm workers thanks to a new crack-down on the undocumented. What surprises me is how no one seems to understand what it's like to do physical labor, all day, day after day. Of course new workers don't last, they aren't being given a fair chance. Nobody, be they Hispanic from Mexico or native-born without experience in a farm field, is going to be able to take physical punishment without a gradual introduction. It's not a matter of lazy, rich city-dwellers who, even when receiving Unemployment Benefits, won't do work below their station. It's a matter of allowing the body to gradually build the muscle sets needed to hoist 20-pound buckets all day, let alone bend over for hours on end.
What's likely is that the stereotypes are too easy to avoid. Lazy Americans. Mexicans who will do anything to support their families. And so the farmers say they 'need' cheap labor, and it has to be Hispanic, because only they are willing to dedicate themselves sufficiently to the task.
Exactly how one could arrange the work so that new hires are given at least a week or so to grow accustomed to it, I don't know. But crops rotting in the field, which seems to be what happened at the end of this year's growing season, points to a problem that has cost growers much more than taking a few steps towards accommodating green farmhands would have.
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