High Cognitive Minds

Last week was one of those strange times that took me completely away from myself. Ever since, I've been in a kind of mental limbo where writing (and blogging) has been just about impossible. It's a situation I've been in frequently, but this is the first time I've spent so much time thinking about it, pulling it apart and trying to understand it.

Years ago, I read May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. What I remember most clearly from it is her complaint that it took her a long time after visitors left to get back to her writing—to get back to a place where she could write. It's a problem only introverts experience or can understand when it happens to others. Certainly, you can't tell visitors what a disruption of your life, even of your very being, their presence is.

What brought this on was a three-day visit from my youngest son, who lives out of state, and his family. I only spent two full days with them, doing the tourist thing—which includes hours of driving, and eating out, neither of which are a normal (or desired) part of my life, and by the time they left I was completely exhausted. I don't know how well I managed the small talk, but at least there wasn't too much time for it. Was there some grandmotherly way I should have been with the kids, something that was expected and that I missed? I have no idea. I talk to children as if they're reasonable human beings, and seeing them only once every two years or so doesn't do much to stir family feelings, which I pretty much lack, anyway.

I can't really say that I took on a role or a persona that wasn't mine. It was more like setting myself in the background and becoming an automaton, responding as well as I could to what was going on, doing my best to seem a willing participant in their activities, and not put a damper on their pleasure. That's what families do, I guess.

One of the most useful things I learned about having ADD is that transitions are difficult. That knowledge has made it possible for me to spend less time in aimless limbos, but it still takes work just to get to the point where I recognize that I'm in a transitional limbo and can begin to claw my way out of it.

This was the first time in a long time that I had to deal with a limbo not of my own making and the difficulty of it suddenly gave me a new perspective on highly gifted adults who never accomplish anything that they think is truly worthy of their abilities. The baseline for my thinking has always been that the demands of life simply don't leave any time and energy for higher and more distant goals. The gifted student who has no clearly defined talents, and hasn't developed a passion for a particular field of endeavor will often wind up in a job that is either unsatisfying or only marginally satisfying. Then marriage and a family.

But what if the problem isn't just one of time and energy, but the loss of self? Maybe it would be more accurate to talk about never having had the opportunity to find one's self. It's often said that some gifted students have a well-developed sense of self. But that may be only in contrast to the average child, who is usually very much a creature of his environment and of his group. It's more likely that the gifted child has the beginnings of a sense of self—one which will probably be destroyed, or at least submerged, over the years. A true sense of self takes maturity, and time and space to develop. But society demands adjustment to the norm, and always does its best to fill up the time and space that might be spent in other ways.

How long would it take to find your true self? In the 1960s, Alice Koller scraped together what money she could and retreated to Nantucket for four winter months. She had to find out who she was, why nothing in her life had worked out as she hoped, and she knew she couldn't do that as long as she was living a life that included a job and other people. Luckily, four months was enough. Later, she wrote about the experience in An Unknown Woman.

Maybe a four month stretch isn't necessary, but neither are you likely to find yourself when all the time you can command for your very own amounts to an hour or two every so often. Ideally, each person has their own rhythm, their own natural way of functioning. Daily life is a constant disruption of that rhythm and of attempts at self-exploration and sustained thought. Society doesn't care about the authentic self. In fact, it functions best when not too many people have an authentic self.

Given the complexity of modern life and the entanglements that are an inevitable part of our lives, going off to an island to find oneself isn't in the cards for most people. But if the need is strong enough, you will somehow find the time and space.