“Why?”
I have been attending therapy recently in a bid to betterise my mental health a little, but primarily to try and make my symptoms of unmedicated ADHD in every day life much more manageable. Therapy has been enlightening, but there’s a fundamental question I keep finding myself asking which I think really just underpins a lot of emotional intelligence and regular intelligence. Maybe some of you do it unconsciously, and maybe some of you have never really asked it; but it’s worth consciously putting this word into your head occasionally.
I was at a Magic The Gathering night at a local game store, and there’s a chap there who’s struggling to pay for something. I overhear the conversation from across the room and just go over and pay for it for him. He was grateful, and I just went and sat back down and didn’t really say a lot. The chap is, shall we say, “challenged”… so it seemed like a good thing to do for someone.
Anyway, I didn’t think much of it until I was discussing this at my therapy session and found myself asking “why did I do that?”. Yes, it’s kind… but lets simplify it to Why do we do kind things? Is it for the betterment of others, or is it really for the betterment of myself?
It dawned on me that I really don’t think people do anything unless they’re getting something out of it. Altruism really doesn’t exist in any real sense. People donate to charity for a sense of pleasure out of doing it. People donate things to charity shops because they want to get rid of their junk, or take pleasure out of donating the things. If we took no pleasure in doing kind things, personally I don’t think we’d do them. Which made me ask “What did I gain out of that interaction?”
On top of the above, I found that one of the foundational answers to this scenario (and others) is that I try to build charge on a sort of Social Capacitor. I have ADHD, and as such I can be quite “full on” - Lots of talking, not a lot of patience, and sometimes quite a lot of moving. Sprinkle in a touch of autism (Hey, I work in IT, is it really a surprise?), and that can make me quite unlikeable over the long term. I therefore, albeit unconsciously, follow some basic rules for living that allow me to build up a persona that I want people to perceive so that when I am being unlikeable in some scenarios, people are more forgiving and my symptoms doesn’t ruin my friendships.
I then have to really start to ponder why I feel so unlikeable… But that’s another conversation for another time, but lets just say that this feeling has been with me for a long time. I’ll try and keep concise and on topic.
I think asking “Why?” to lots of things is a philosophically concise way of trying understanding one’s own mind; and the reasons we do, or are doing, partiular things. I’ve found it helpful over the last few weeks just sitting down and really trying to get down the brass tacs, even if it is somewhat nugatory in the end.
