We All Live In A Bubble That Limits Us

You, me, and our neighbor live in a bubble in which there are various weak restrictions, conceptions, or accommodations. Very weak, and they are because it is difficult to sustain them when we open our gaze to a more extensive reality and we dare to travel along different paths, away from the comfort that comes from walking through those already kicked.

On many occasions, our reduced points of view cause certain stereotypes and prejudices to be maintained, seeing only what we want to see or that, from the place where we are sitting, we can appreciate.

However, the truth is that the world is much richer than what our senses are capable of revealing to us working in an environment that is part of that bubble that we talked about at the beginning. Let’s take an example and we will understand it better.

The bubble of the Argentine national team

They say that the Argentine team was concentrated a few years ago preparing a great championship. It was not too long since the Albiceleste players had lifted the World Champions Cup. The coach had arranged a training session a little longer than normal, about three hours.

Well, this story tells how these players complained to their coach. They did not understand why some world champions had to train so much if they were already the best. Before these complaints, the coach suspended training and let them return to the hotel.

Knowing their coach, the players suspected that this matter was not going to stay that way. And, indeed, it did not stay that way. The next day, they were all awakened at five in the morning and summoned to the hotel reception. When they got on the bus, they all thought that a punishment training awaited them for the attitude they had shown the day before.

Nevertheless…

The bus passed by and left the training ground behind, to plunge into the big city. He parked in front of a subway entrance and the players received only one order, to observe. In an hour they saw hundreds of people coming down those stairs, dressed in a more or less humble way, heading to their jobs.

Many of them still had a long journey ahead of them to reach their workplace. After a long day and a new journey back. The coach reminded the players that those people who earned a tiny amount of their salary trained more than eight hours every day and that the vast majority, later, when they got home, they didn’t have their food ready or their house clean.

He took them out of their bubble and made them look at reality. It was a call to humility. A memory for those who had forgotten that, no matter how world champions they were, they did not stop being “equal” to those people they saw. The same ones that got up when their children had not yet woken up and that came home when their children were already sleeping.

Our bubble

All of us, on occasion, have been that Argentine team. We have stoned our state of mind or that of others with complaints that were far from being fair before an exercise: to get out of our bubble and look at ourselves in front of the world as alike. As similar to other human beings who are in a much worse situation than ours.

This does not mean that no one should abandon their aspirations to opt for what they believe best, but it is only a memory, a wake-up call, so that those aspirations do not end up blinding, generating a frustration that is meaningless when, we look with the eyes open to reality, at six in the morning, I faced a subway station.