adapt

There is a piece of human nature that I find really fascinating – It’s the awareness of any one human’s ability to manipulate their environment. There are definitely sub-facets there, but that’s the big part. And I don’t think it’s a scale, either – I think it’s an off/on switch. Once it’s switched on, it never goes back off. Some people are born with the switch on. Some are born with it off, but something eventually flips it, and some people live their whole life with it in the off position.

I used to think it had to do with ingenuity, creativity, skill, or intelligence. I don’t think that anymore. I think some brains are just wired to accept their situation as it is, and some are wired to change the situation to suit them. And you can rewire that connection. You can also choose not to act on it, but that doesn’t change the awareness. Either you realize you can change your environment, or you don’t.

Some examples (I thought that might be easier to see where I’m coming from than to try to explain in my normal rant format.)

Your desk at work sits on an air conditioning vent. Your feet are always freezing.

Some people accept this reality. They wear warm socks, bring a blanket, maybe even bring in a little space heater. They adapt themselves to suit the environment the best the can.

Other people ask if they can move the desk. Or they climb under the desk, take the vent cover off, and put foil underneath to block the vent. They change the environment.

Your kitchen faucet has low hot water pressure.

Some people accept that, and just live with it. They may use another sink for some things. They may call a plumber.

Other people investigate, even if they aren’t sure what they’re looking for. They see if any bits unscrew. They might google the problem. They check for solutions.

I want to again mention the distinction, though. I am not talking about “laziness” (which is a made up concept but that’s not the point, see this fantastic article by Devon Price.) I’m also not talking about people who know there may be something they can do, but don’t want to get their hands dirty. I am talking about people for whom it never occurs that there may be something they can do about it. It just is what it is. Their environment it static, constant.

The entire mentality affects so many parts of your life. I know, because that switch used to be off for me. I grew up in a household where things just… were. I was like that. My brother was like that. My parents were like that. You just learned to live with the inconveniences of life. The front sidewalk was uneven, so you watch your step. They door doesn’t latch well, so you always double/triple check it. The windows are hard to open, oh well. It didn’t *occur* to anyone that those small concrete sidewalk slabs aren’t THAT big, they could be dug out and re-set with some help. It didn’t occur to anyone that a door latch could be pretty easily replaced. It didn’t occur to anyone that the wood tracks on the window could be sanded a little and smoothed out.

You can learn exceptions and still keep the switch off. I took computer networking in high school and college. I realized that if your computer is slow, you can do something about it. That knowledge didn’t necessarily apply to the broader world though. It did, however, put some pressure on that switch.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I think that’s probably how that switch turns on for a lot of people. For me, it took a few “exceptions” before suddenly the world became full of options. The first was computers – When I was in high school, my parents did gift me a cheap computer for Christmas. It was an infinitely kind gift honestly, considering we didn’t have a lot of disposable income. If course, I managed to almost immediately kill it by spilling an entire vase of water on it. I certainly could not afford one, so if I wanted a computer, I had to get creative. I had to fix that one, or Frankenstein something else together from parts I could scavenge. I had enough knowledge from my bit of networking classes, and some access to other broken machines, and managed to keep piecing together computers. Honestly, in some ways, I’m still using the same computer today since all I’ve done since then is keep replacing bits and pieces as need replaced, or as I find better broken machines.

Then next was cars. I really wanted a car, but again, poor. A friend of mine offered to sell me his running (but barely) blazer for $300, with the mention that he had no idea how long it would live. Perfect! I had it about two weeks before it’s first failure. And then it sat, for a few weeks, in my driveway, just rotting away. The loss of freedom was eating at me, but I could not do anything. I eventually managed to convince a neighbor to look at it, and it was a serpentine belt that had snapped. He told me he’d help ME fix it, and we did it together. This was a rather easy repair, and I was baffled that taking this car from “no power steering, screaming horrible noises, overheating” to totally fine was like a half hour of putting in a belt. Even that didn’t quite flip the switch, it didn’t empower me to try and just fix things on my own. But it made me start thinking.

No, as much as I’d hate to give him any credit since he kind of fucked me over in a lot of ways, I think the honor of flipping the switch goes to my ex-husband. He was born with that switch on. And with the foundation of the computer and car stuff, all it took was seeing someone who, when a door was squeaky, would oil it, so on and so fourth. And I quickly began to see how the world can be manipulated to make my life better.

Now, every time something is a barrier, no matter how small, my instinct is to figure out how to remove the barrier as opposed to how to work around it. Adhd makes it difficult to always effectively DO something about it, but my brain always recognized things and thinks about potential solutions. And even when things aren’t barriers, it’s spinning away trying to figure out how to alter and improve things.

I do remember the moment I realized there was a switch, that there was a distinct difference in how these brains process their environment. A coworker of mine, a nice lady maybe in her late 50’s, was sorting some jewelry, and reaching way over with some degree of effort to set each thing on the scale and weigh it. I’d been working there two or three years, and nothing on her desk ever moved, it just was where it was and I figured that’s how she liked it. Who am I to interfere?

Hearing the struggled grunts to stretch over got to me eventually though, and I said “Do you want me to move that scale to the other side of your desk? There’s another outlet over there, it’s no problem.” And she stared at me for a second, almost confused, and then smiled gleefully and said “Oh, yeah! That would be great! I never would have thought of that.” So I unplugged the scale, moved it over, and plugged it back in.

A few days later, she told me she was at home doing something or other in the kitchen, and she suddenly thought about how much more sense it made to have that scale on the other side of the desk. And she realized how many things in her kitchen would make more sense if they were moved, and she moved things around. She was EXCITED.

And I think for a little moment there, my inherently mean brain (something I’ve worked really hard on correcting) thought “… Wow, what a simple woman.” I caught myself though. She was smart, she was capable, she was reliable – She just didn’t see the world the same way. And then I suddenly realized that I used to be just like that. I used to see the world the same way. My environment was static, constant. Until it wasn’t.

And I just love the awareness that the switch is there, because since then, I’ve been able to share that awareness. I see people who have that switch in the off position, and I can foster that flip. And I think that’s really cool.