After being up in the mountains at the camp where I used to work, I heard someone say obliquely, "ah, people up there live in a bubble."
There have been times when I have thought that myself. Unfortunately, I discovered, we all live in bubbles, no matter how much we want to believe we are "engaged" with the rest of the world.
Occassionally there are times when something startles you out of your own personal bubble.
When Honda arrives on the lot and parks in between two ridiculously expensive vehicles, she tends to startle people out of their morning fog. Faces cloud over with confusion when they see her. Some people actually seem offended at her beat-up exterior, cluttered interior, and an idle that roars and undulates mercilessly. It is as if a car like that just isn't allowed on the road.
There's a woman in my office who shocks me out of my bubble because hers is so evident. She decorates her cubicle like the Amazon. I mean, she has more green, leafy plants and framed photographs of green, leafy plants, than the Huntington Gardens. Who frames a picture of bamboo and sticks it next to a large pot of real bamboo? She does. Is she trying to comfort the real bamboo with images of the mother-ship? Inspire the real ones to grow as strong and straight as those in the pictures?
Even more odd is the fact that she has a fake stone waterfall in her cubicle, surrounded by fake plants and animal figurines. Out of this mass of vegetation she emerges with her hair in a.....mullet? Not quite a mullet, but it's getting there. It's an evolved mullet. It's like a mullet attempting elegance--with long, luscious pieces flowing behind the layered, cropped, front. She slowly walks laps around the office, sighing as she goes, seemingly unhappy, and then returns to the cave of her cubicle. I've never seen anything quite like it.
Before you assume I'm simply writing to be cruel--let me tell you something that both Honda and Amazon Mullet Woman have taught me: people pay attention to aberrations. Even if they are inconsequential. In fact, that something as insignificant as an odd hair-do, or a beat up car with sounds coming from god-only-knows, can shock our sensibilities and lead us to comment, write or read about them.
How is it that such things can turn our heads, and yet we become nearly numb to the reality of human suffering? We, myself included, can become fixated on the most trivial of things, as long as they are a bit unique. Perhaps it is because trivial, odd, matters can seem like so much more of an aberration than the big issues that always haunt us. Maybe we're numb to the big issues in life, like dying children, because they are so pervasive. Much more pervasive than a woman who lives in a fake jungle in a corporate legal office.
For example: what story was the most emailed story of the NY Times online edition today? "Personal Health: Scientists Cast Misery of Migraine In a New Light."
I think people gravitated toward that story because it is a small, trivial aberration to the otherwise nearly-overwhelming constant stories of suffering in the news. This article was a small piece about hope. It was a small piece about framing suffering in a new way. It was full of weak, almost pathetic hope, but hope nonetheless. Sometimes we fill up our bubbles with these little hopes to protect us from the great desperation of the rest of the world. The desperation that sometimes threatens to swallow us whole.....
I don't know if that is a good, or a bad thing. I suppose, again, it depends on how you frame it.
Meanwhile, children in the Congo perish from ailments a bit more serious than headaches. But that story isn't even in the top TEN emailed stories of the NY Times online edition.
Why is the picture of this poor child relegated to the kind of news we'd rather not share with our friends? Perhaps because it just isn't unusual enough. We definitely like our bubbles.
There have been times when I have thought that myself. Unfortunately, I discovered, we all live in bubbles, no matter how much we want to believe we are "engaged" with the rest of the world.
Occassionally there are times when something startles you out of your own personal bubble.
When Honda arrives on the lot and parks in between two ridiculously expensive vehicles, she tends to startle people out of their morning fog. Faces cloud over with confusion when they see her. Some people actually seem offended at her beat-up exterior, cluttered interior, and an idle that roars and undulates mercilessly. It is as if a car like that just isn't allowed on the road.
There's a woman in my office who shocks me out of my bubble because hers is so evident. She decorates her cubicle like the Amazon. I mean, she has more green, leafy plants and framed photographs of green, leafy plants, than the Huntington Gardens. Who frames a picture of bamboo and sticks it next to a large pot of real bamboo? She does. Is she trying to comfort the real bamboo with images of the mother-ship? Inspire the real ones to grow as strong and straight as those in the pictures?
Even more odd is the fact that she has a fake stone waterfall in her cubicle, surrounded by fake plants and animal figurines. Out of this mass of vegetation she emerges with her hair in a.....mullet? Not quite a mullet, but it's getting there. It's an evolved mullet. It's like a mullet attempting elegance--with long, luscious pieces flowing behind the layered, cropped, front. She slowly walks laps around the office, sighing as she goes, seemingly unhappy, and then returns to the cave of her cubicle. I've never seen anything quite like it.
Before you assume I'm simply writing to be cruel--let me tell you something that both Honda and Amazon Mullet Woman have taught me: people pay attention to aberrations. Even if they are inconsequential. In fact, that something as insignificant as an odd hair-do, or a beat up car with sounds coming from god-only-knows, can shock our sensibilities and lead us to comment, write or read about them.
How is it that such things can turn our heads, and yet we become nearly numb to the reality of human suffering? We, myself included, can become fixated on the most trivial of things, as long as they are a bit unique. Perhaps it is because trivial, odd, matters can seem like so much more of an aberration than the big issues that always haunt us. Maybe we're numb to the big issues in life, like dying children, because they are so pervasive. Much more pervasive than a woman who lives in a fake jungle in a corporate legal office.
For example: what story was the most emailed story of the NY Times online edition today? "Personal Health: Scientists Cast Misery of Migraine In a New Light."
I think people gravitated toward that story because it is a small, trivial aberration to the otherwise nearly-overwhelming constant stories of suffering in the news. This article was a small piece about hope. It was a small piece about framing suffering in a new way. It was full of weak, almost pathetic hope, but hope nonetheless. Sometimes we fill up our bubbles with these little hopes to protect us from the great desperation of the rest of the world. The desperation that sometimes threatens to swallow us whole.....
I don't know if that is a good, or a bad thing. I suppose, again, it depends on how you frame it.
Meanwhile, children in the Congo perish from ailments a bit more serious than headaches. But that story isn't even in the top TEN emailed stories of the NY Times online edition.
Why is the picture of this poor child relegated to the kind of news we'd rather not share with our friends? Perhaps because it just isn't unusual enough. We definitely like our bubbles.
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