I had an interesting conversation with some acquaintances a few days back. For some reason, I ended up sitting at a table with a couple of folks who were lugging around diagnoses of ADD, like so much luggage they had to schlepp around an airport, in perpetual search of a flight that kept changing gates.
One of them embraced their ADD diagnosis with forced gusto, essentially turning the baggage into heavy Luis Vuitton satchels with special locks on all the latches. They proudly proclaimed that they were a “ready-shoot-aim” kind of person, who took things as they came… and proceeded to also comment that for all the balls they have in the air at any given time, they didn’t actually get much done.
Another of them sat silently as we discussed distractability and attention issues and what it’s like to live in today’s world. Not to be dragged down by any ADD/ADHD diagnostic belaborment, I proposed the idea that in today’s world, with all the things that are constantly thrown at us… if we have any interest at all in life, and if we are really invested in what happens to us and the world around us, we darned well sure are going to get “distracted” on a pretty regular basis.
I mean, if you give a damn about what’s going on around you, and if you have a deep and abiding interest in your surroundings, and your surroundings change and evolve, how can you not pay attention to shifting things?
“If you’re really, really alive,” I proposed, “you’re going to be prone to be distracted.”
The one with the “expensive luggage” just looked at me.
The quiet one got up and gave me the biggest hug I’ve gotten in a long time.
I think the quiet one would agree with me, when I loudly agree with Peter Breggin, who says “psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.”
Check out his piece — it’s a wonderful read.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 