What we can't know

The parts most difficult to explain, evaluate:

why one feels what they feel- internal, external, muscular, and emotional... sometimes there are no ways to describe it.

The medical and psychological professions, the academics, they all try to put into words, diagnosis, and clear terms the completely inexpressible life-worlds of the individual. What is this, what is that? What is normal, what is not? Who goes with which group, when and how, and why? Carl Linnaeus was able to classify plants, animals, fungi, protista... but the human experience, the human be-ingness, is it so quantifiable?

We classify, we organize, we label this and that in order to have something to grasp. But the reality is, what we are grasping for is often elusive.

Let's examine pain... or, for that matter, anxiety... or restlessness...

"Although bodily sensations seem very direct and concrete to the subject, they are elusive and obscure at the same time. Pain, for example, is an indefinite experience. The subject does not fully understand his own body and, worse, he finds it extremely difficult to communicate the pain sensation to others. Pain, by definition, is a lonely sensation and what cannot be shared by others cannot be discussed or recognized by others and thus remains, in a sense, abstract, a non-experience." (1)

In class the last few days, the others have noticed what I have not been able to articulate. I am quiet, recluse in my chair, withdrawn from them though I am there. One day I stood, behind my chair, to let the blood flow back into my legs that were suffering with the need to run away.

Can I articulate for others the experience of a person of activity who is confined to a seated position for hours on end? The mind shuts down, but only after prolonged dissonance with the body. The legs can go into pain. I clench my legs in efforts to avoid distraction, to settle my unease... and cut off my circulation. The stomach tightens. The breathing lightens. I search for a door, a way out, if the situation becomes too difficult.

Movement is freedom, in mind and body. If I can move, I can breathe. I can let my thoughts flow freely. I absorb and articulate meticulously.

It is tiring to hear the dialogs of those who 'have ADHD' and get media attention... 'oh, I get sooo distracted', 'yes, it's like this'... I am glad they can raise their voice, but do they really bring attention to the actual experience, or do they confirm the stereotypes and the classification schemes of it?

If I could take you into an anxious experience for me in the classroom, it would be based on feeling- you would experience bodily sensations and with that, mental images. These would not be so easily defined, and the closest experience would be that of art.

Rather than definitions of 'anxiety' or 'adhd' I'd like to just explore an idea: those who need and enjoy a great deal of activity, and those who don't.

Activity- mental, physical, emotional... it is movement, dynamic, elastic, plastic... it is awareness of heartbeat, breath, body and its dialog of "notice me, use me, make me live"

I notice a dread, a thread of pressure in people, when confronted with 'active' others. It is a glaring reflection of inactivity, passivity. And the interpretations of activity are wide-spread and sometimes demeaning: they can't sit still, something is wrong with them, that woman does not rest, that man is too busy.

When I am confined to a chair, sitting, stalemate for hours, I can tell you that my activity suffers. This is like pain inside me. Can you imagine for one minute as if you were a bird, ready to fly towards the sunset, and as you were taking off, wings outstretched, someone superglued your feet to a heavy wooden seat... in a room, with walls and a ceiling.

This is what it feels like, daily, for those people we want to classify into 'anxiety' or 'ADHD'... maybe there could be other terminology: 'trapped activity', 'confined body', 'physical dissonance'.

I am realizing that I can no longer be silent about my own experience of 'education' if I am to articulate and argue for a thesis on the construction of diagnoses around our kids. I am one of them. I still experience the debilitating trapped-ness of classroom dynamics, or situations of confinement. There is a reason I work with young people the way I do- to see themselves for what they are, and who... in a context of a world that may not understand them.

It is easier to theorize though- to make it always about the other. To say: oh, this experience belongs over there- in that grouping...

It is harder to say: here is my experience, and while it fits your criteria for this category, and that... it does not define me, who and what I am. This is a much scarier confrontation, and not just for the personal implications...

If I can say: "here I am, with this experience..."

someone else can say: "quantified as..."

and we'll still be stuck with the inexpressible expressed.

(1) Whyte, S. R., S. van der Geest & A. Hardon

2002 Social lives of medicines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (p. 45)