Tilting at Windmills ...

In our culture the phrase - "tilting at windmills" is often the only bit of the Cervantes' tale of Don Quixote and his companion Pancho that many of us know ...

It is an apt phrase for fool-hearty quests and fights that we may often engage in as we, like the hero of Cervantes' tale, launch a quest for visionary ideals, and wage a battle against perceived injustice.

It is unfortunately, a phrase I can deeply relate to ...

A couple of years ago, I engaged in a Quixotic battle against a local business with whom I had issues ... without revisiting the ugly details of the fight that lasted and lingered too long, and jumped the rails into a territory it had no reason to venture ... I will say honestly and openly - I was wrong, and I have paid an enormous price for this foolhardy fight.

Today however, I read a piece in Gabor Mate's book that illuminated for me the "Why?" that has long lingered in my mind as I considered the breadth and depth of the fight and how I impulsively ventured into it, defying even my own understanding and that of many people around me ...

Mate notes that one of the traits shared by many who live with ADD is a painful hyperconsciousness of injustice accompanied by an ineffective rage ... he goes on to note that time after time adults with ADD relate how sickened they are at seeing someone weak hurt or humiliated - how sickened they are, and how helpless they feel at intervening. I use the word sickened literally: there is a churning, nauseating feeling in the pit of the stomach and the head spins.

As I read those words a light went off within me ... my fight with the business in town was motivated by that very feeling - outrage at how I perceived others were being unjustly treated ...

This is not to justify my actions, nor to dismiss the outcome of my foolhardy quest for justice ... (I WAS WRONG - it was NOT my fight, and more significantly, one of the individuals I was "fighting" on behalf of needed to deal with the repercussions of their foolish and illegal actions and their own personal decisions without a "saviour" trying to set things right !!! I WAS WRONG !!!) but rather, this allows me to understand for the first time the physiological response that often grips me when I perceive an injustice.

Moreover, this is a double edged sword ... it is this response that drives my commitment to things like Fair Trade and Community Outreach through ministries like the local food cupboard, Samaritan House and the MCC. But the dark side of this sword comes when my impulsivity (also a trait of ADD) overreacts to the perceived injustice and engages in ineffective rage ...

The challenge ahead is to revisit the tale of Quixote and utilize the hypersensitivity in places and areas where the empathy it carries can make a REAL difference, rather than simply chasing after windmills ...

A couple of years ago I was wrong ... I'll own that. I've more than borne the consequences of that battle ... Today what lies before me is the opportunity to use the awareness and sensitivity to injustice in positive and affirming ways ...

It's an opportunity that comes with understanding for the first time what lurks within me ... and today the words offered to me a couple of weeks ago at South Down begin to not only sink in, but become an operating reality in my life ... As I noted previously:

To know means

to record in one's memory.

But to understand

is to make it part of one's self.

-

Today I move from KNOWING to UNDERSTANDING !!!