ADHD and can we please not talk about the news?
Seeking moments of shared humanity outside my home, outside my phone
The year is young, but we’re all feeling the weight of time.
Every day there’s another headline to strip us of our hope and make us weary.
As an ADHD feminist and mom, I’ve chosen my issues. The ones on which I can *at least attempt to* have an impact. I’m reserving calls to my representatives about the following:
Women’s rights (voting rights and health issues)
Disability rights
Cuts to funding that impact cancer patients, especially kids
I want to jump in on everything else, but we make less of an impact when we are scattered. Or we’ll simply burn out.
So, while I feel a pull to comment on ALL the bad news, I also feel there’s already too much noise.
Can we please talk about something else? Just for a little?
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I played bumper cars in the street last week, tapped the fender of an unfamiliar vehicle parked outside my house.
I got out and assessed. Among the bumper stickers, I saw no damage. I could have easily driven away, and I was already late to pick up my son for an appointment. But I knew how I would coach my kids in the same situation, so I ran into the house, scribbled a note that included my name and number, and I left it on the windshield under a wiper blade, hoping to never hear from the vehicle’s owner.
The next day, I got a call from an unfamiliar number. When I answered, she introduced herself as the person whose bumper I hit. Oh, here we go.
I closed my eyes and braced myself for a scolding and the total of the damages she was seeking. However, no such scolding came. She simply confirmed she also didn’t see any damage to the car. I paused to make sure I heard her correctly as she continued.
“I’m just calling to thank you,” she said. “You see so much negativity on the news, but you gave me hope that there is still goodness in the world.”
I was dumbfounded. I have spent a lifetime making mistakes and tapping countless strange bumpers, and never have I received such a reaction. Just as I could have easily driven away from the scene, she could have crumpled up my note and forgotten about it. Instead, she went out of her way to reach out to me, to connect. This woman did for me what she claimed I did for her. We restored each other’s faith in humanity.
We had to get outside our routines, our comforts, our confines to make it possible.
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Working from home and experiencing the world mostly through the clickbait on my phone, I’ll admit my view of things can become distorted. In a previous blog, I talked about hiding my head in winter hygge hibernation (how’s that for alliteration?). Then, I shared how art is helping me take back a semblance of control. However, the sun is setting later, and I feel there’s a new opportunity to find comfort outside.
In Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library, he says:
“To be a part of nature [is] to be a part of the will to live. When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as… it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.”
I want to start running again for many reasons — like my physical and mental health — but a major one is to ensure I’m building in opportunities to experience the real world, nature, others. I want to sense the vastness.
To have the chance to help the woman in the wooded park round up her loose pup. To take part in the sidewalk chalk obstacle course designed by the neighborhood youth, doing their requested five jumping jacks in place regardless of whether or not they’re there to witness it. To smell the wind.
To find love and magic.
Pessimism has its place for sure — it can motivate us to push for change — but it’s important to take a break, a breath, and a mindful look around every once in a while. The bad stuff isn’t hard to find, but the good stuff isn’t either.
The world is still the same beautiful place it was when it began and the same awesome rock it will be long after we’ve perished.
Kids still play cops and robbers outside. They still splash in puddles. Their faces still light up when they catch a firefly in their hands on a summer evening up past their school-year bedtime. People still wave to me when I run by. I can feel the joy of existence just from touching a leaf on a branch on my running path.
If you need a push, let this be yours. Get outside your routine, outside your home, outside your phone. Find humans at the grocery store, the post office, or the gym to smile at. Walk around with bare feet. Marvel at a bird. Seek out the moments of shared humanity and existence.
There is good all over this world. We just sometimes need to seek it out.
