What Does Your Privilege Bubble Look Like?

We all live construct and live in some kind of privilege bubble, some thick, some thin, some opaque, some transparent, some big, some little. What is yours like?

Bubbles have played a role in my life ever since I was a small child. My Mom and Dad used to buy little jars of bubble mix for us and we would go outside and just blow bubbles until it was all gone! And then we could go back in the house and Mom would just mix up some soap and water and off we’d go again, blowing bubbles.

I often “date” myself with stories like this and that’s totally ok. In those days, nobody had any of those big bubble makers you see nowadays. A big bubble was made by carefully and softly blowing on the loop with the soapy film and if you were really good, you could make a pretty large bubble, like half the size of your head! But some of the greatest fun was just holding the bubble stick and rapidly waving it back and forth to create a whole slew of bubbles and then watch where they went and when they popped.

Fast froward to my late teens and my “hippy” years and I was driving across country with some friends and we happened across some similar folks around Salt Lake City. They invited us to join them up in the mountains and for a small fee, fed us a bit of their local trippy substances (mescaline, actually). It was the first time I’d had a trip from natural substance, all the rest being produced in laboratories.

On that trip, I wandered away from everyone else and found this small creek and watched it as it passed over rocks and made lots of bubbles. I realized then, and I have taken that image with me over all these years, that we are all just bubbles floating in the stream of life, some going for a short distance, some for much longer but eventually, we all pop and merge back into the stream.

Photo by Jernej Graj on Unsplash

Ok, enough of that kind of dreamy philosophical talk! But I still remember that day.

Anyway,

I was out walking around the other day and I had this realization that not only do I have all kinds of privileges because of the colour of my skin but also because of where I live, how much money I have available to me, my age and so on and so forth.

And the only way I could mentally conceive and include all of the conscious and unconscious privileges I had was to visualize them as a container that surrounds me wherever I am.

And the container metaphor that seems to work best is a bubble.

Why a bubble?

Well, for starters, bubbles are usually not just one size. They can grow in size if other bubbles merge with them or shrink if outside conditions dictate that. You’re a single person, you meet someone special, fall in love, move in together or get married and now your relationship bubble is much larger than when you were single.

Bubbles can also burst and when that happens, you are totally vulnerable until you get another bubble. We’ve all had that experience. You think you’re heading along and everything is just fine and all of a sudden some kind of catastrophe explodes your bubble; your partner leaves you, you’re diagnosed with a terrible, life-changing disease, your child is kidnapped, etc. Make up your own tragedy or trauma.

That’s what happened to me when I was let go from a job and again when I was diagnosed with cancer (which is currently in total remission).

Bubbles like to be in the company of other bubbles just like themselves. They often stick to each other and travel together on whatever path they happen to be following at the moment.

But the bubble I really want to talk about is my privilege bubble.

That’s what started all this for me.

As a caucasian, white male living in North America, there is no land that was not formerly part of an Indigenous Nation’s territory.

None.

And yet, both the United States and Canada legal systems treat Indigenous Peoples as if they were always under the yolk of white christian colonizer rule.

That’s because Indigenous People never saw a need to write down their “laws” and ways of being, and since “pagan”, unwritten ways ways were not “legally” valid to the invading settlers, they could be replaced by the christian colonist’s charters and laws.

Total disrespect.

Even though I am not christian, I am a middle-class-income white person, and that’s the privilege bubble I always move around in, whether I knew it or not.

It’s been very un-settling (pun intended) to finally perceive and realize this. As an elderly person who has spent many years looking at my inner spiritual path and how I should manifest myself in the world, it was a shock to discover that I existed in such a bubble.

But also freeing in a way.

Because you can’t make any conscious changes to better yourself if you don’t see where you need to make those changes.

It is a definite crisis = opportunity, which is one of my favourite maxims.

So back to the bubble metaphor/image.

I don’t think anyone can live in this world without some kind of bubble to insulate them from whatever threats, risks or uncertainty they need insulation from.

And I certainly am not an exception to those needs.

So how do I move forward?

For first steps I think it is best to explore my bubble and see what it is constructed of.

Poke it, prod it, feel its texture, try to see what it lets in and what it keeps out.

Photo by Jacky Zhao on Unsplash

And like all the processes in personal reconciliation and inner spiritual discovery, it’s definitely going to be a never-ending life-long practice.

So.

Why did you make the bubble you’re in?

What does it let in and what does it screen out?

There are no simple answers here.

Our bubbles are all multi-faceted with many layers. It’s kind of like peeling the layers of an onion, one layer of cells at a time.

Another image that resonates for me is that our bubble layers are not unlike the rings you see when you cut down a tree. Tight, thin ones for times of low moisture low nutrients stress to the tree and wide ones for environmentally good times.

So I encourage you to start to look at your bubbles.

I’m very curious to hear about what comes up for you in this process, if you’re willing to share.

See you on the Good Road,

Rich