Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
W.C. FIELDS
I am not an equestrian or a horse lover, but I am fond of horse and mule analogies. I'm not sure where I picked up this habit, but I did spend 7 months working for a feed merchant in a small town with a prominent horse industry. One of my best analogies is that of the stallion and the mule. You can ride a stallion to death. It will run until its heart explodes. You can't do that with a mule. The mule will do good work for you, but it will not allow itself to be worked to death or mistreated. I used that analogy many times on the job as I watched management work the stallions to death which was the stallions deciding to quit while the rest of us mules stayed and quietly labored for years. I lost count of those stallions.
Outside of work, I like to use the analogy of the show horse, the race horse, and the work horse. I see a lot of blue collar men who are confused about their identities and can't decide what they are and want to be in their lives. I know what they should be, but they don't listen to me much like the stallions didn't listen to the mules.
The show horse is the working man who decides he needs to spend money on fancy cars, boats, RV campers, motorcycles, and whatever else his credit limit will afford him. For them, the optics are what matter. It doesn't matter that most of these toys go unused. What matters is being seen in possession of working class status symbols. Naturally, this delights the bankers and finance company professionals. Later, it delights the repo man.
The race horse is the working man who sees himself as some sort of competitive athlete. These are the guys working on their golf games as the bank forecloses on their homes. These are the guys who compete in bass fishing tournaments that don't even yield enough prize money for them to justify the purchase of those expensive bass boats. At some point, the fantasy fades for them as they let the golf clubs rust and the fishing rods collect dust as they watch the real thing on ESPN.
The work horse is the working man who sees himself as a working man. Instead of buying a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, he buys a lawn mower and starts a mowing and landscaping business in the hours he has when gets off work. Instead of buying a Jeep to flip over in the woods, he buys a boring pickup truck, so he can haul tools, supplies, and refuse.
I identify as a work horse. My brain damage has greatly killed my capacity for work, but it has not killed my love for work. I have worked with a lot of show horses and race horses in my time. But I have known some work horses who became my heroes. The irony is that the only difference between the three horses is self-delusion. The show horses and the race horses work but end up broke. The work horses are secure because they don't blow money on their fantasy selves.
Nobody wants to be what they are. This is why you have this 3 horse thing. I think being a work horse is the best thing you could ever be in life. It must be some trick of the Devil that turned working men into such self-hating individuals. They trade humility for foolishness. This message will certainly fall on deaf ears, but it is the most important lesson I have learned from all my years working. Embrace who you are. Know thyself.
You can be a show horse, a race horse, or a work horse. You can't be all three of them. Reality won't allow it. Let hard work be your sport and hobby. Be the work horse.
