Tim
07-28-2005, 01:59 PM
I don’t know if the Gunny Sack Race is still an event at summer camps or at Sunday School picnics as it was when I was a boy. In this event, kids lined up at the starting line with their legs fitted into large burlap bags. Grasping the open top of the bag with the hands, one propelled oneself forward by hopping. If one attempted to run in these sacks or overextended a hop, a spill resulted. The kid who won the race was sometimes the one who avoided a fall.
Life with ADD seems to me at times like a Gunny Sack Race. The only difference is that I am using a burlap bag while others are free from this encumbrance. This analogy breaks down quickly if you try to extract too much from it; everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses. I am also one of those with ADD for whom medications are not very helpful. Edward Hallowell, author of the classic ADD book, ‘Driven to Distraction’ also finds ADD meds unhelpful.
I’ve learned a slew of Heloise’s Helpful Household Hints for dealing with ADD. My ADD hero, Samuel Johnson, who had huger hindrances than just ADD, accomplished much in life including writing a dictionary of the English language.
Recovery from alcoholism has been beneficial for me in dealing with ADD, since a wheelbarrowful of the same principles apply. I didn’t discover that I had ADD until a couple of years after achieving continuous sobriety. A cavernous capacity for endurance kept me drinking for decades, and in recovery that same persistence, hanging in there, has helped me over the rough patches and the falls that occured while hop-hop-hopping along in my gunny sack.
Aesop wrote a fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The tortoise won the race (not broadcast on OLN) by virtue of her steady, plodding, step-by-step progress, always keeping her eyes on the prize. Another sage, the biblical preacher, said the ‘race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong’. Something there to think about.
Life with ADD seems to me at times like a Gunny Sack Race. The only difference is that I am using a burlap bag while others are free from this encumbrance. This analogy breaks down quickly if you try to extract too much from it; everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses. I am also one of those with ADD for whom medications are not very helpful. Edward Hallowell, author of the classic ADD book, ‘Driven to Distraction’ also finds ADD meds unhelpful.
I’ve learned a slew of Heloise’s Helpful Household Hints for dealing with ADD. My ADD hero, Samuel Johnson, who had huger hindrances than just ADD, accomplished much in life including writing a dictionary of the English language.
Recovery from alcoholism has been beneficial for me in dealing with ADD, since a wheelbarrowful of the same principles apply. I didn’t discover that I had ADD until a couple of years after achieving continuous sobriety. A cavernous capacity for endurance kept me drinking for decades, and in recovery that same persistence, hanging in there, has helped me over the rough patches and the falls that occured while hop-hop-hopping along in my gunny sack.
Aesop wrote a fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The tortoise won the race (not broadcast on OLN) by virtue of her steady, plodding, step-by-step progress, always keeping her eyes on the prize. Another sage, the biblical preacher, said the ‘race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong’. Something there to think about.