What if?

🧠💗 I am not, nor have I ever been a Black and White thinker. Like every other ADHDer, and Autistic person I know, I am a deep and nuanced thinker, with many questions in a world that seems to be constantly trying to diminish complexity into non-existence! Do I seem to be a B&W thinker? - that is a different question.

As ND children, either accessing and influenced by mainstream education, or so out of sync with our peers that we do not 'fit' into a mainstream education (or sometimes even verbal spoken language), others around us (adults mostly) corral us into B&W agreements to make life easier for them.

As an astute, nuance noticing, social fabrication spotting Young Person, who evidently wearied adults pretty easily, I was informed in strict, overly simplified, (often untrue) Black and White terms, what was expected of me along with the other children.

I knew even then these B&W rules were not the actual truth of life, but in order to have a voice in the conversation children have to aquiesce to the language of those with the power to punish (or provide comforts)

For example: Were I caught in a 'lie' I was punished. The rules were laid out: lies are wrong - 'we do not tell lies' (that's a lie for a start) and someone would expertly explain the undeniable states of human right and wrong.

Should I catch an adult in a lie - often I was still somehow punished - and the truth of the lie exisiting was obfuscated, flatly denied (with more lies) labelled 'well that's not the same', or even the noticing was resolutely ignored as though my perception of the 'lie' never even existed.

We all know this process, and so many seem to just accept it - on the surface at least.

I cannot quite imagine what type of thinking just flatly accepts the lie of 'we don't tell lies' and all the other myriad rules we are told make us 'good humans' - but I and other Neurodivergent Beans witness this convenient surface level con trick be embraced day in day out by a majority who then get labelled as the 'flexible thinkers' because they are happy to lie as long as they are not 'caught' in that lie.

Being caught would bring shame and a struggle of cognitive dissonance about being 'good' and a liar.

All the ND Beans I know, live very presently, awarely, and fully in amongst the nuances and dissonances of society,
and we add it to: the hyper awareness of our environments; the extra 'bits' per second of information we process; the preparatory thinking we invest in working out best practices in a multi faceted, uncertain, and fluctuating reality - etc.

- and in order to fit in with the rest of everyone's expectations, we greet you with the rules you gave us - the rules stated out loud as truths, rights, and wrongs - and hope to fuck someone will meet us with the integrity that is so needed in this complex, delicately balanced world we share.

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