I WAS struck the other day by an
article that claimed we are heading
toward an altered state of attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD).
It seems this is not anymore an illness associated with children.
With our new technologies, this disorder has become pandemic, viral, affecting
everyone all over the world, thanks also to today’s phenomenon called
globalization.
My dictionary defines ADHD as “a childhood syndrome
characterized by impulsiveness, hyperactivity, and short attention
span, which often leads to learning disabilities and various
behavioral problems.”
This was first identified in 1987, although we can be sure
this anomaly must have existed long time ago, perhaps not as bad and
as prevalent as it is now.
With children, it comes as an illness whose cause is
largely freed of malice and guilt. It’s more due to some hormonal
imbalances. I don’t think we can say the same of the adults afflicted
with it.
With children, the effects and manifestations are more on
the irritating aspect and are largely harmless. With adults, they are
much worse since they tend not only to kill the body, but also the
soul.
With children, we can readily see it and most likely act
on it. With adults, we need a lot of convincing that we have it. Its
cure, of course, goes beyond the medical and psychological. To be
effective, it has to heal the soul. Alas, this requires tremendous
effort and resources!
What is obviously wrong is that people nowadays have
forgotten almost completely that we are meant to be contemplatives or
to have a running awareness of God’s presence. That is to say, men and
women who manage to see God in everything and in everyone as well as
to see everything and everyone with the eyes of God.
For many Christian believers, it would seem that to be
contemplatives is an exclusive prerogative of people like the
Carmelite nuns and monks. At this point in our development, it’s
amazing that we still retain this old myth.
All of us are meant to be contemplatives with a strong
spirit of recollection. And we don’t have to stay in convents and
monasteries to be so. The streets, the offices and farms can readily
be our cells. This ideal is contained in St. Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians:
“…be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inner
man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts, that being rooted
and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the
saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
“To know also the charity of Christ which surpasses all
knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” (3,16
ff)
But again, who practically remember these words, let alone
make an effort to turn them into a living reality in themselves? It
would seem that these words have remained plainly biblical, and
confined and stuck there. They have not or are not allowed to leap out
of the book.
This is the challenge we have. It is how to overcome the
massive and thick barrier of human resistance to anything that has to
do with faith and religion. And then to show the many ways that can
make this ideal a reality in everybody’s life.
That wall has a human component consisting of our natural
limitations. It has a worse component—our sins and their consequences
in our lives. But the ways to be contemplative are actually endless.
Let’s fatten our war chest for this purpose.
There is always hope. We just have to be patient and
continue to evangelize, trying to drown evil, confusion and ignorance
with an abundance of good and certified, authoritative teaching and
doctrine.
We need to continue reminding everyone that we always need
to exercise our faith, hope and charity. We cannot remain reacting to
things by using merely our senses and even our intelligence, no matter
how high it may be.
We need to use faith and to activate our spiritual life.
Of course, right now these things would look strange to many, but
that’s just at the beginning. With patience, hard work, sacrifice,
etc., the right things can be done!
Christian teaching tells us about being docile to the Holy
Spirit. This doctrine has to be better known by people, and its ways
of effecting it should be taught and shown tirelessly.
I think that any effort to stop the slide to
attention-deficit disorder threatening us today has to start and end
with the effort to make ourselves truly contemplative souls in the
middle of the world.
globalization.
My dictionary defines ADHD as “a childhood syndrome
characterized by impulsiveness, hyperactivity, and short attention
span, which often leads to learning disabilities and various
behavioral problems.”
This was first identified in 1987, although we can be sure
this anomaly must have existed long time ago, perhaps not as bad and
as prevalent as it is now.
With children, it comes as an illness whose cause is
largely freed of malice and guilt. It’s more due to some hormonal
imbalances. I don’t think we can say the same of the adults afflicted
with it.
With children, the effects and manifestations are more on
the irritating aspect and are largely harmless. With adults, they are
much worse since they tend not only to kill the body, but also the
soul.
With children, we can readily see it and most likely act
on it. With adults, we need a lot of convincing that we have it. Its
cure, of course, goes beyond the medical and psychological. To be
effective, it has to heal the soul. Alas, this requires tremendous
effort and resources!
What is obviously wrong is that people nowadays have
forgotten almost completely that we are meant to be contemplatives or
to have a running awareness of God’s presence. That is to say, men and
women who manage to see God in everything and in everyone as well as
to see everything and everyone with the eyes of God.
For many Christian believers, it would seem that to be
contemplatives is an exclusive prerogative of people like the
Carmelite nuns and monks. At this point in our development, it’s
amazing that we still retain this old myth.
All of us are meant to be contemplatives with a strong
spirit of recollection. And we don’t have to stay in convents and
monasteries to be so. The streets, the offices and farms can readily
be our cells. This ideal is contained in St. Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians:
“…be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inner
man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts, that being rooted
and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the
saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
“To know also the charity of Christ which surpasses all
knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” (3,16
ff)
But again, who practically remember these words, let alone
make an effort to turn them into a living reality in themselves? It
would seem that these words have remained plainly biblical, and
confined and stuck there. They have not or are not allowed to leap out
of the book.
This is the challenge we have. It is how to overcome the
massive and thick barrier of human resistance to anything that has to
do with faith and religion. And then to show the many ways that can
make this ideal a reality in everybody’s life.
That wall has a human component consisting of our natural
limitations. It has a worse component—our sins and their consequences
in our lives. But the ways to be contemplative are actually endless.
Let’s fatten our war chest for this purpose.
There is always hope. We just have to be patient and
continue to evangelize, trying to drown evil, confusion and ignorance
with an abundance of good and certified, authoritative teaching and
doctrine.
We need to continue reminding everyone that we always need
to exercise our faith, hope and charity. We cannot remain reacting to
things by using merely our senses and even our intelligence, no matter
how high it may be.
We need to use faith and to activate our spiritual life.
Of course, right now these things would look strange to many, but
that’s just at the beginning. With patience, hard work, sacrifice,
etc., the right things can be done!
Christian teaching tells us about being docile to the Holy
Spirit. This doctrine has to be better known by people, and its ways
of effecting it should be taught and shown tirelessly.
I think that any effort to stop the slide to
attention-deficit disorder threatening us today has to start and end
with the effort to make ourselves truly contemplative souls in the
middle of the world.
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