2025-09-21
In the Quaker Meeting this morning I was musing over the line in Four Quartets
and how I have been so badly caught up in that.
Distraction is symptomatic of the ADD part of ADHD. Why, I wondered. Not hard to see some plausible reasons.
Being distracted – from some emotional distress – helps to protect one from feeling that distress. The other side also: hyperfocus on some preferably intellectual task inhibits the awareness of distressing emotions. Easiest if the emotions are blanked off completely. Next best: if the arise, fall into distraction.
Quaker worship can potentially help, as perhaps any meditative practice can help: not (at all) by getting rid of those pesky distressing emotions, but rather by letting oneself sink down below distractions — below distractability. Being there, one can
… … wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.