Attention Deficit Disorder

It's one of the insignificant disease we're all, human, have. It's not ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) like in psychological world. I called it a normal Attention Deficit Disorder because I think it’s appropriate for this story.

“You have seen but not observed whereas I both see and observe.” (Sherlock Holmes)

Often we're, human, seeing things but not pay much attention to it. We're just letting the information pass through our eyes to our brain but not keeping that information inside. If you don't believe me, just try it with this little test.

Try to remember the path you walked everyday. You may choose from your surroundings, like house, office, your favorite lunch place, your bedroom, your anything. Example, try to remember the path from your office lobby to your office room. Do you remember the color of the floor? What pictures hanging in the lobby? What color of the receptionist desk? Do you remember the face of your receptionist? Will you acknowledge him or her if you meet him or her outside the office building? That very kind of questions. After that, try to compare the answer with the reality. Usually people always have wrong memory about the things they get acquaintance everyday.

The reason I believe that we're all having this insignificant disease is because of three insignificant events. First and second happen in a long time ago. Third happen just lately. But if I think about it again now, all of those events involve few of design person (we're all know that design person is usually live in their own world and often not paying attention to their surroundings, right?) and one of the most insensitive person I've ever know (he’s my bestfriend, but I admit it, he’s insensitive about few things), so maybe this three stories doesn’t count as valid. Really, I just want to share it because it was kinda funny.

First event happened in the mall, very near to my, or we could say, our office. It was a normal-habitual day. We walked in the path strive to Mall’s foodcourt. And just like that, suddenly I notice something different with the mall floor. I can't quite remember the differences between before and after. Was it the pattern or the type of the homogenous tiles or anything? Finally my curiosity win and I decided to ask one of my colleague, very smart colleague actually, so intelligence level won’t be the problem here, about those floor.

The conversation is like this:
Me: “Madam, are those floor is like this yesterday or it is different?”
Madam: (look surprise) “Hmm, I don't remember actually.”
Me: “Oh.”
Just like that.

And until now the question about the floor is still unanswered.

Second event happened in the path between UPH and Mall, again. In the Benton Junction, there was a newspapers and magazines booth. We walked through it almost everyday. One day I decided to buy one dress from a department store in the Mall. The cashier said that if we brought a coupon from certain newspaper, we’ll get more discount (about 20%). Excited to hear that, we (my friend and I) decided to walk to the bookstore and buy that silly piece of newspaper. In the bookstore we found out that that bookstore never sells any newspaper at all (and we were never realize about it before, that’s one). Finally we decided to walk to our last resort, newspapers and magazines booth in Benton Junction, only to found out that the booth wasn’t there anymore. How could we miss it when we walked to the Mall before (and that’s two)? It’s funny how people keep forgetting the insignificant information and deleting them from our brains.

Third event happened lately, just few days ago. I was going out with my sister to one Mall in Jakarta. We were going to meet my childhood bestfriend there. When my sister and I arrived there, we walked in the corridor and suddenly my bestfriend passed through in front of us with his long strides. Avoided screaming, I decided to stand there, behind him, and text him. Behind him, we were seeing him read the text, seeing him looking for us, and seeing him failed to acknowledge us eventhough we were standing right behind him. When he made the gesture to replying my text, I wave my hand and call him. Finally he noticed us. Then he came and said, “Oh my God, I couldn’t recognize you because of your hair.” That’s one thing. Yeah, right, I’ve change my hairstyle and he never see it before, but come on, he’s my bestfriend from childhood, since our elementary school. How come he failed to recognize me? I decided to let it go and not complaining about his failure as a bestfriend when he said another bomb-sentence, “How could I recognize you? You didn’t use your glasses!” FYI, I’ve stop using my glasses since my high school graduation, and since that we’ve already met each other hundreds times. His remarks really getting on my nerves and I start complaining about his insensitive way when acknowledge his surrounding. Gosh, lucky I understand his characters and bad habit.

So, after that third event, I started to question about human’s lackness in acknowledging our surroundings. In my thought, this insignificant disease called Attention Deficit Disorder is happening in all of us. Or maybe it didn’t. I don’t know really, just sharing my thoughts. In my case, sometimes there’s few useless memory that stick in my mind and I couldn’t forget it at all, but sometimes I couldn’t remember one important information no matter how hard I try to dig it. I’m not generalized it, but in some way, there’s some part of us that unconsciously sorting all the memories kept in our brain and choosing which one to forget and which one to remember. Or maybe we aren’t forgetting it, just burying it so deep that we need to take a little more time to remember it. Really, human’s body is one magic instrument, we wouldn’t understand all the extraordinaries in it ever.

But again, I don’t know. What do you think? ;))

PS: Calvin, my bestfriend, don't be angry when you read this, okay. Admit it, you're a little insensitive about your surroundings. But that's the way you are :) And i don't mind if someday you repeat this mistake once again and failed to acknowledge me one more time. But just that once, okay, if you do it twice or more, I'm going to get angry.