Many years ago, when I was at that age when my entire identity was based around the approval of my teachers, I was given a very simple task: Go and fetch my tea. There had been some sort of surprise assembly in the hall on the other side of the field to where the classrooms were, and in the migration my teacher had left a fresh cup of tea on her desk. I was quite confident back then that I was my teacher’s favourite student because I was always the one she called upon to run errands for her. Maybe I was just a sap.
Nevertheless, I dashed back to the classroom, feeling like Superman moving at super speed, and retrieved the nearly-full cup of tea nestled in its saucer. Heading back across the field was a much slower process. This time I was burdened with tea. I couldn’t hustle, because that would slosh the tea around too much. So I walked, pinching the rim of the saucer tightly in two hands, keeping the entirety of my attention fixed on the porcelain I was holding. I didn’t dare spill a drop. Even at that young age I was wise enough to reason that my teacher would prefer her tea unspilled, even if it did take longer.
My thoughts (as they always did during that time of my life) returned to Superman. If Superman had been given the task of bringing tea, could he have done it much faster? I didn’t have a suitable grasp of physics at the time, but even I could intuit that Superman, just like me, would be a slave to the inertia of the milky liquid. Sure, maybe he could deliver the teacup at super-sonic speed, but upon arrival back at the assembly hall, he would come to a sudden halt and tea would go everywhere. No, it stood to reason that Superman couldn’t have done the job any better than I could. These were the contents of my head because, after all, I was still a child.
The mind of a child is such a fascinating thing. From birth until puberty their minds are awash with a profusion of chemicals and stimuli that are in constant turmoil. A child will believe anything, not because they are stupid, but because there is not yet a barrier around their reality. For a child, anything is possible. Children believe in monsters, and dragons, and magic. They know that they can talk to animals, and fly and move things with their minds, they just haven’t figured out how yet. Children will count and recount their fingers and toes to make sure they haven’t lost any, or grown any extra, and they’ll forget whether a mustache grows below the nose or above it. Children will believe that their teachers are cannibals who live in their classrooms. To a child, death is not an ending, it’s just an inconvenience. A child will tolerate unbearable injustices because they cannot gauge what is and isn’t right.
It’s amazing to me, then, that with reality swirling around a child for years on end like the world’s longest drug trip, they are expected to arrive at adulthood with all the chemicals in their brains settled neatly into their appropriate compartments, with no spillage or overflow. Not only are they trying their very best to keep the chemistry of their mind in check, but they’ve got to do that while navigating a world that has no patience for the mental storm they are going through.
To me, navigating life with a perfectly balanced brain is like being told to hurry across a field, as fast as we can, while holding a cup of tea and not spilling a drop. Not only that, but some of us are given teacups that are overfilled, or cracked, or too heavy for a child to carry on their own. For some of us, this field is in the middle of a storm, and some of us have to carry this teacup while navigating abusive families, or personal tragedies, or toxic relationships, or many of these things put together. The worst part is, we spend most of our lives thinking that all of our teacups are identical. The children who are crawling on their bellies through the mud think that’s what everyone has to do. Even Superman, with all his strength and speed and his power of flight, could not complete such an impossible task.
A lot of people, I know, arrive at adulthood with some tea spilled over the sides of their teacup (and why wouldn’t they, considering how challenging it was to get there in the first place). This manifests in so many different ways. Maybe it’s depression, or immobilizing anxiety, or bipolarity, or obsessive compulsion, or self-destructive addictions. Many adults struggle to pay attention to simple tasks, or are unable to pull themselves out of bed in the mornings. Countless adults don’t trust themselves to hold down jobs or embrace new relationships. The sad thing is, these people haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just that the chemicals in their brains haven’t settled in a way that they were expected to. And honestly, it wasn’t fair to expect that in the first place.
A few days ago I was talking to a friend who has ADHD. They asked me what I had planned for the rest of the day and I told them that I was thinking about writing a blog post. Later, when the blog was written and posted, they marveled at my ability to make a plan and see it through. They told me that the fact that I could do a task without having to wrestle with my mind in order to get it done was, to their eyes, something of a superpower. I’m so appreciative that my friend told me this. It was an important reminder that having a neurotypical mind is a privilege. In the same way my race and my gender have removed certain obstacles for me in my life, so too does my neurotypical brain. The fact that I don’t have to wrestle with my mind in order to get out of bed, or socialize, or complete tasks, or maintain relationships, or seek self-improvement is the result of pure luck, and it’s not something that I should ever take for granted. My teacup is balanced, and my field is sunny, but I shouldn’t assume that it’s the same for everyone else. By that same token, surely we should be more aware that having a neurodivergent brain is probably far more commonplace than we realize. We need to work towards a world that is far more accommodating of this. Shouldn’t there be no embarrassment and no stigma when we announce that our teacup is messy? Because, chances are, yours is too.
In the end, I was able to deliver the cup of tea to my teacher, but it wasn’t pristine. Despite my careful and measured gait I still shook and stumbled as I crossed that sports field, so that by the time I arrived in the hall a small puddle of milky tea had pooled in the saucer. Nevertheless, my teacher, who was always kind, accepted the tea and told me Thank you. She didn’t even mention the spill. The tea wasn’t perfect, but my teacher loved it all the same. And besides, it’s not like Superman could have done it any better.
The Hangul Games 