I’ve been thinking a lot about the “social bubble” that we’ve been taught to use as a model as we reopen the economy and begin to go back out. Currently, I have seven people, plus potentially my hairdresser who I hugged yesterday, who in my mind is officially in my bubble, but I know I won't see for at least two weeks, so she is pending. We were friends before she became a hair stylist, and I am wondering now if we can become better friends post-pandemic, and we already have plans to make plans.
This bubble, and inadvertently adding someone to it who I don’t actually know very well, has really made me remember my pre-recovery days where I was very alone. In my opinion, this bubble idea is a fantasy. In what world do 10 people make a sort of social contract to engage only with each other for the next several months. I would love to have such a wonderful and loving circle of ride-or-die friends, but I don’t even know what 6 of the 7 people in my bubble spend the majority of their days doing, let alone rely on them for my safety and the safety of my high risk parents (who are in my bubble anyway!)
In what I believe to be a Utopian vision of sociality for the foreseeable future, I am reminded of when the apostle John wrote that we love God because He loved us first. The people in my social bubble who I ultimately don't know very well, and are really only in my bubble by circumstance, reminds me that while I feel alone a lot of the time, I still know a handful of people who, with God's will, can be people of genuine reciprocal support and love in my life, if we make the effort for each other.
This is yet another fascinating awakening that has been presented to all of us in this pandemic - a novel opportunity to actually restructure our lives from the bottom up. Who do we want in our lives? Really? When our very lives, and the lives of those we love are at stake, who do we actually want to be around?
I truly hope that the people who are in my bubble today, and a few others who I hope to add by the time we have a cure where 60% of the population needs to be vaccinated in order for these protocols to be removed, are my forever people, my end of the world people. The new world we enter is my new space where I officially shed my old unregenerate self, and put on the robes of love and recovery, and where I finally begin to experience true love and kinship.
This bubble, and inadvertently adding someone to it who I don’t actually know very well, has really made me remember my pre-recovery days where I was very alone. In my opinion, this bubble idea is a fantasy. In what world do 10 people make a sort of social contract to engage only with each other for the next several months. I would love to have such a wonderful and loving circle of ride-or-die friends, but I don’t even know what 6 of the 7 people in my bubble spend the majority of their days doing, let alone rely on them for my safety and the safety of my high risk parents (who are in my bubble anyway!)
In what I believe to be a Utopian vision of sociality for the foreseeable future, I am reminded of when the apostle John wrote that we love God because He loved us first. The people in my social bubble who I ultimately don't know very well, and are really only in my bubble by circumstance, reminds me that while I feel alone a lot of the time, I still know a handful of people who, with God's will, can be people of genuine reciprocal support and love in my life, if we make the effort for each other.
This is yet another fascinating awakening that has been presented to all of us in this pandemic - a novel opportunity to actually restructure our lives from the bottom up. Who do we want in our lives? Really? When our very lives, and the lives of those we love are at stake, who do we actually want to be around?
I truly hope that the people who are in my bubble today, and a few others who I hope to add by the time we have a cure where 60% of the population needs to be vaccinated in order for these protocols to be removed, are my forever people, my end of the world people. The new world we enter is my new space where I officially shed my old unregenerate self, and put on the robes of love and recovery, and where I finally begin to experience true love and kinship.
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