As I was thinking about a message to bring in the New Year, I happened to remember an article I came across a couple weeks ago in USA Today. It indicated that ADD has reached epidemic proportions in this country. Something like 1 million new school age children are diagnosed with ADD annually. The medical community isn’t clear on what it wants to do about it, although it continues to prescribe more Ritalin than it ever has in its history.
Whether the media are sensationalizing the issue, as is often their want, or whether the medical profession is over-prescribing medication to treat the symptoms, not the cause, is anyone’s guess. The bottom line, however, is that if there is an Attention Deficit Disorder problem right now, it has become a sign of the time.
Look around you, for heaven’s sake.
Have you been to a toy store recently? Janet, Jordan, Jared and I went by an FAO Schwarz that had recently opened in Orlando. It was mobbed for Christmas, and I was overwhelmed, and I have a tough time imagining that every child there didn’t feel the same. In any other context, that much of anything would produce toxic shock to any system.
The often-quoted statistic is that the amount of information on the globe is doubling every five to eight years. What that reflects is even more significant.
• The domestic publishing industry is spitting out on average, 14 hardbacks, 26 trade books, and 44 paperbacks per day. That makes the shelf life of any one book, even if successful, something in the order of four to six weeks.
• There are more words published in one issue of the Sunday edition of the New York Times than all of the words published in any language for the first 15 centuries of recorded human history.
• Search engines on the Internet scan, based on current estimates, 43,000 pages of new text added to the Webb on a daily basis.
Time Warner and other national television and cable conglomerates have expanded channel selection from what was three channels 20 years ago to what is very close to being 170 channels in those communities that are currently installing it. Even in those communities that are not, typical cable providers offer 80 different channel options.
• The mega concept, such as a Virgin four-story mega store for books, CDs and videos or the current 200,000 square foot grocery, drug, and discount retail store, are no longer conveniences to consumers but basic necessities in order to simply display the total quantity of items available.
And on and on,and on.
Is it any wonder it is difficult for any of us — adult or child — to focus our attention on any one thing for any length of time.
Last year was Jordan’s first Christmas that he could truly understand. Janet and I probably did the typical thing most parents do with their first child. He got inundated with Christmas gifts. As he was continuously overwhelmed by one gift after another, Janet and I looked at each other and recognized our error. By overwhelming him that way, nothing got any attention or appreciation.
Similarly, we continue to be inundated, as adults, by visual images and a speed of movement that none of us can truly digest, synthesize, or even recognize. Hence, we end up losing focus, thinking less, and acknowledging or appreciating nothing at all. It’s the old adage — the faster I go, the behinder I get.
I am sure that there is a physiological basis for Attention Deficit Disorder at some level. And for anyone who has it or whose children have it, I mean no offense. And as to that level, I’m certainly not either making comment or opining.
However, at a very different level, there is something else going on entirely. I call it ADD of the spirit.
It’s not a disorder, it’s a disease. It is this chronic search — this incessant search — for more options. Newer options. Different options. Something different. Something better. Something other than.
It’s not just the proverbial grass that’s greener. But what I’m talking about is a malady. It’s the incapacity we feel today to get our arms around our environment. In the midst of words, books, digital and visual images, its a malady that makes if virtually impossible to settle down enough to focus on one thing at one time for one result.
I’ve had graduates call me within weeks of having graduated from the Five-Day Training Program to pitch me on pre-paid phone cards, network-marketed long distance, international bank debentures, mortgage reamortization programs, multi-level insurance, and on and on.
As the New Year unfolds, let’s slow down. Focus. Concentrate. And commit. ADD, in the broadest sense, isn’t a school child’s malady; it’s a societal epidemic. We don’t need to always smell the roses. But it would be nice if we were traveling slow enough to at least notice them.
Original writing date: January 1999