I have a front door. I also have a back door. And windows, and a yard, and a front street, and a neighbourhood… Goodness gracious, I live in a town, surrounded by countryside, in which the rural extension of my community flourishes. It is in a province, where roads lead to other towns, and cities, and mountains, and provinces not my own, the rest of the country, and countries not my own. And I could take a boat or a plane over an ocean, and find more countries and provinces and territories, states, counties, municipalities, rural areas, villages, towns, cities… EVERYWHERE on earth, one could travel, and bump into humans. Fellow humans. With families, parents, grandparents, children, siblings… friends, neighbours. Community. We all are born into one. Love bubbles inside love bubbles.
Well, they should be. Love bubbles, I mean.
I was born into what I thought was a love bubble, but bubbles expand as air is blown into them. This bubble was exposed to wind, and it didn’t expand, it didn’t fly, it built a cage around itself. Equipped with doors, with signs above them, indicating exit, not just of the bubble, but of the protection the bubble afforded those who came into it. But there was no protection for those who left and didn’t return. Exit became the point of no return. If someone did return, there was always a check done about the interim wandering, and a great expression of relief that they returned to safety.
It wasn’t a love bubble. It was a bubble forced to remain the size and shape of itself by constriction and restriction. I think, if they took the structure off, they would find that the bubble had popped long ago, while a new larger one responded to the Wind outside, but everyone thought that was the only Love bubble, and therefore the only safety.
But everything that is, exists in the largest bubble of all. And it responds well to the Wind. One might even say, it is One with the Wind, as are all who exist within it. None of us could be safer. But fear is an awful dictator of perception. The unfamiliar a tool of fear.
I opened the carefully crafted door, labelled exit. I saw the unhindered sunlight. I smelled the fresh air. At times, I even felt the gentle rain. I noted the uninhibited expanse of the sky, and the many who walked unfettered in the wide open spaces. And I joined them.
The people in the bubble slammed the door. On the outside of the door, they posted the conditions of re-entry, which were, honestly, much more stringent than the conditions of initial entry, or even those requirements for continued acceptance.
Bubbles look like glass if they are perfectly round and still, they even reflect their surroundings. But it is an illusion. They pop. And the air inside turns out to be exactly like the air outside. Hmmm.
Maybe there is no “us” and “them.” Maybe my bubble isn’t “right” and your bubble isn’t “wrong.” Maybe it is perspective influenced by indoctrination that creates the bubble we perceive, and not the bubble.
Have you ever observed a room full of small children? A playground of tiny strangers? My children are brown. I’m not sure anyone of their age noticed until they were in grade two. When they were in preschool, no one said anything. I got asked if they were adopted by other parents and even strangers, on occasion, (definitely not… a mother might forget the level of pain, but she doesn’t forget her birth story). Color consciousness as having any role in friend choosing is influenced by the grown ups. The kids never said a thing about it. Religion, also, never enters the mind of a child, they just want to know if you’d rather swing or go down the slide…
We grown ups and our bubbles. We grown ups, and our self made prisons. Culture has decided our personal bias is systemic. That would be the end of the discussion if we couldn’t exercise free will. Compassion is always a choice. Empathy is always a choice. Common ground is always a choice. Fear being replaced by love is always a choice.
I don’t know your bubble. I only know mine. I know the prison of being in it. I know the freedom of having left it. I know the Love of joining the entire human race and embracing the presence of our Source within all that lives, breathes and sustains life in our universe.
One big love bubble. One.
Not sure if the analogy holds? Open the door of your home, walk outside, open the gate of your yard and keep walking. Allow yourself the gift of awareness. Smile at the people you meet. Some of them you may have met before. Meet them again as though they are part of your bubble. They feel, hear, love, need validation and acceptance. Don’t confuse unity and oneness with agreement, or a lack of individual perspective. It isn’t that. It is choosing to see in each other the same breath that resides in ourselves.
Humanity’s schisms are not the result of politically systemic issues, able to be resolved by lobbying for the rights of specific groups, equity is not solved by economic reform… Education can’t “fix” earth’s ills. You can’t alter one’s internal state of being, or sense of belonging by changing the rules for them or someone else. The only thing that does that is embracing One Love.
It has been said to Love your neighbour as yourself. The only ideology you can change is the one you hold in your own heart. If your ideology won’t let you love yourself without condition, or change without doing penance, or be safe without being a separate unit with no connection to others… it is not the world that needs to change. Love yourself. See Love in yourself. And then look for that Love in others. The results are Divine.
No bubble. Just a whole lot of wide open doors. Love.