To me, this blog is somewhat of a journal where I start a thesis and let you figure out the rest. The other day, I was walking around Southside Berkeley with my pal, neighbor, and future roommate JT. Everytime you put us together, we have a conversation that cuts through the sugar coating and straight to the meat of the cake. The topic of our latest deep dive last week was regarding the environment's role in the development of ADHD. We are born into this world crying, with so much novell stimulus all around us we are completely discombobulated. The only thing we can see is 10 inches in front of us, our mother or father’s face. Everything else? Fuzzy colors that don't matter until we are more independent. As we grow older, our eyes develop to see those fuzzy colors with more clarity. And we learn the importance of different colors. Red is stop, blood, and passion. Blue is calm, ocean, and wisdom. The colors nature shows us, at a biological level, are for our survival. But take one stroll down Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley in 2023 C.E to find that colors no longer have any significance. Blue is a mirage that leads you to the ice cream shop “Cream”. Red is the cranberry tea I see someone holding that I’ve been meaning to try. The associations between visual stimuli and response have become exceedingly intricate. And the same goes for almost every other sense we have today. Taste, touch, hearing, and smelling have been hijacked too. Since brains vary on a wide spectrum, not everyone can keep up with the nonsense of the city. Heck, the nonsense of our phones could be a whole topic on its own. Since I don’t have the mind for all that stimuli, I had to dissolve my dependence to Instagram and Snapchat, which honestly required me to summon a lot more internal strength than I was bargaining for. Then, to make this big city feel a little more quiet I am going to try wearing sunglasses to mute the colors around me, consciously focus on what the colors and pictures around me are making me feel, and take time to smell the roses. See you later, you alligator you.