Bubbles Are Meant to Be Popped
Changing your perspective to change the way you live
I’m in Brooklyn, sitting at the park a few blocks from my apartment, watching as kids play in the summer sun. They’re laughing, blowing bubbles, chasing them across the open field like fireflies. The scene is nostalgic, reminiscent of a time when I felt like life was fun, carefree, open to the endless possibilities the world had to offer.
But does it?
Moving to a new place, you would think so. But I still feel restless, overwhelmed, unable to see the beauty in the transition; in my surroundings. It’s stressful. Being in a new place so far from home. You’d think I’d be inspired, and maybe I am, but it’s strange being outside of my comfort zone; my usual bubble.
Bubbles are meant to be popped.
Moving to Brooklyn has been a transition. One that’s taken up a lot of time and energy. Because like all transitions, it’s a change, and change is hard. Especially for me.
I don’t often step outside of my comfort zone. For me, this usually means being in my room, or out walking the streets, or at the park, alone, left to my thoughts without any distractions or hindrances to my creativity. In my comfort zone, I’m free.
But am I, really?
One of the main reasons I haven’t been writing is because I haven’t been experiencing enough. Being stuck at my parents in the slow-paced rhythm of Simi Valley, CA didn’t afford many opportunities to venture outside of my comfort zone.
My bubble.
It was warm there, in the cozy room my parents provided, trapped in an endless loop of beating my head against the wall, trying to write. But I wasn’t writing — not really. Nothing new, at least. So I wasn’t progressing; I wasn’t moving forward with my life, so I had nothing new to write about; nothing interesting to say, because I was stuck in my restrictive bubble.
Bubbles may seem warm and comfortable and seemingly the only way to live, but that’s a lazy notion. It’s a notion that keeps us stuck in our ruts, frustrated and impatient for things to change.
Yet we all live in bubbles. Be it bubbles of ethnicity, religion, nationality, thought, or location, we all like to create bubbles validating our worth, our identity and what we believe in. It’s human nature. We tend to stray towards comfort and stability and what feels normal, safe, because to not do so means to open ourselves up to a world of unknowns, an array of possibilities too unimaginable to imagine.
Yet what we have to see is that bubbles are constraints of our own making — not so free, or so we like not to think — because they allows us to be “free” to closed-off thoughts and notions, devoid of outside perspective, to the world around us. It’s a bubble, after all. It’s supposed to keep us safe, seemingly transparent, clear and carefree, yet it’s not.
Bubbles keep us closed off to new possibilities, new perspectives, new lives to lead. They’re deceptive prisons, filled with so-called laughter and joy and thoughts too pretty to let the real world in; prisons of our own making. Prisons that keep us trapped in a constant state of stagnation, floating away into the breeze like kites on a listless day; stuck in the vicinity of one place, one thought, one way of being, until — Pop!
That’s the nature of bubbles: they ultimately burst, leaving you reeling in the wake of what you thought was normal. What used to be.
The pandemic we find ourselves in is a testament to this notion: all bubbles have been popped, replaced by Covid and the wicked uncertainty of: Will this ever get back to normal?
Who knows. Probably not anytime soon.
But in the meantime, we’re left picking up the pieces, trying to fit ourselves back into shapes that are no longer relevant or practical. This is our reality, now, the means by which we live; and the means by which the world turns: the popping of bubbles.