One Thing That Every Self-Aware Person Should Be Thinking About

100 Things #021 - Pop Your Own Bubble

Photo by Mathieu Turle on Unsplash

Our little world of bubbles

Have you ever felt like it’s becoming more and more difficult to truly engage with opinions different from your own? 

Do you want to think critically about what’s going on around you, but find yourself struggling to adjust the direction that your thoughts normally take you?

In a world chock-full of algorithmically positioned media and hyper-curated avenues of discussion, it’s only natural that we as people would begin to ignore just how prominent our little economy of bubbles has become. 

Every individual person exists in a world of bubbles. Some bubbles they exist in on their own, some they share with a few others, and some bubbles cocoon entire communities of people along with them. 

These bubbles serve a number of important functions, no doubt. From enjoying a sense of community to protecting oneself from unfamiliar ideas that may prove to be harmful or misinformed… Being enclosed in a sort of protective layer from the outside world has its benefits.

But it shouldn’t take much convincing in today’s climate to communicate how these bubbles can also be inherently damaging. 

Simply by virtue of looking at the world through the filter of one’s own bubble, one’s reality can drastically be altered, especially when these thin layers of bias can cumulate to create a much more intrusive impact on our individual perceptions of the world around us. 

The important thing to recognize is that, yes, the bubbles that we form around ourselves are intended to help us, but that doesn’t mean that one is inherently going to be hurt by putting their guard down. These layers that so often separate individuals end up creating more distance and divide than many often realize, and it’s up to each person to pop their own bubble to begin to close that divide.

It would seem that wherever one looks these days, divides like these are only widening between people, making this a more pressing issue now than it has been for quite some time.  

Inherent to the formation of these bubbles that we find ourselves in is a sort of feeling of innate skepticism about the intentions of people around us. These bubbles we reside in are fragile, and so naturally, many fear them popping, especially at the hands of others. 

Photo by brooklyn on Unsplash

Life can understandably be a lot easier without the friction of worrying about if and when one of your bubbles might pop, but the discomfort of having the limits of your own perspectives challenged and pushed is a necessary part of growth in a world where people approach the world from a vast array of different vantage points.

These bubbles can be thought of as bias. They are our echo chambers, our preconceived notions, our tendencies and thought patterns. To an extent, living in these bubbles is simply an aspect of humanity. But also, understanding how these layers of predisposition can alter the ways in which we experience the world around us is a necessary part of being self-aware. 

Now, removing all of these elements from one’s thought pattern is likely an unrealistic thing to strive for, and could be seen as too extreme of a reaction, but developing an understanding of which bubbles we exist in that could potentially be harmful to ourselves or to those around us feels like a worthy thing to strive for. 

In a world which naturally seeks to push people apart and draw lines in the sand, let’s remember to do our part to break down those barriers and close divides. Pop a bubble or two, and try something new. 

I’ll leave you here with a few journaling prompts for those who want to do a bit of guided thinking around this topic:

• Can you identify any of your own bubbles? What are they? How long have they been there?

• How do you feel like your bubble might be affecting your relationships with other people?

• What do you feel like the worst-case scenario would be if you popped one of those bubbles?

---

Thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments or send me an email.

For now, have a good week, and I’ll see you at 100.