Childhood.  When we were little, we couldn’t wait to grow up. We wanted to rush through life and become “old enough” to do things like stay up late, or do things grown-ups would not let us do.

As adults we’re old enough now to do just that.  But somehow, we end up realizing that along the journey called life, something is missing but just can’t put our finger on what it is.

And then… we realize that it was just that – somewhere along the line, someone burst our bubble. 

Have you ever had anyone ‘burst your bubble?’  We’re not talking about your bubble you blow from your bubble gum and not the bubble you make with soap bubbles – the bubble of your hopes, dreams, thoughts and ideas.

Bursting bubbles disrupts your peaceful way of being, BUT IT DOES NOT HAVE TO!

As children we acquired a ‘learned response’ to become reactionary when people tried to burst our bubble.  Maybe long ago one of our parents thought we had an overly active imagination or sense of wonder and wanted us to learn from their mistakes and didn’t want us to get hurt.   Maybe a teacher, who didn’t want us to get ahead of ourselves wanted to bring us down from the clouds and stick to the assignment at hand.  Perhaps our boss at work decided they didn’t want us to show up others on the team, so they chose to burst our bubble as to be on an equal playing field with our co-workers.

Regardless of ‘what’ it was – chances are you have had someone burst your bubble before. It doesn’t feel good.  Our past behavior may have been to become defensive or withdraw or lose any motivation to move forward.  But allowing the action of bubble bursting does not have to lead to disrupting our peaceful space.  It can actually create a sense of peace.   How?

We are in charge of how we let things affect us.  The world is filled with plenty of naysayers and negative people.  Most people who choose to burst our bubble aren’t mean and vindictive, they usually care about us more than we know.  All they are doing is preventing us from getting hurt, sheltering us from disappointment and pain.  They are trying to be protective, so we are not let down.

Quite often we will find this behavior coming from neighbors, friends, co-workers, even our loved ones at home.  And if they are being protective, it is coming from a place of love.  Granted, there are those who allow jealousy and envy take over and they want to see us fail.  But we cannot let these types of feelings override our journey, our mission, our purpose in who we are or who we are becoming.  It is our right to be able to pursue interests, goals and ideas that are part of our purpose of being here on this planet. 

The truth is that disappointment and pain are good things if we are to grow as people. We cannot learn from mistakes made, if we are not allowed to make any.   We cannot achieve anything if we are given ONLY praise and not constructive criticism as we will have nothing to learn from to become better and stronger.  

Bursting our bubble can be a gift from others… IF WE ALLOW THIS TO BE SO.    

You own your hopes, dreams, ideas and thoughts.  You own your feelings.  You also own how you choose to look at any given situation.  

It is WRONG to wish ill upon people out of revenge for the hurt YOU ALLOWED yourself to feel by having your bubble burst.  Don’t forget – you allowed and enabled the reaction and chose to feel pain.

It is WRONG to burst someone’s bubble just because yours was.  Your bubble will never float and go anywhere because you’re too wrapped up in their bubble popping instead of yours soaring.

It is up to YOU to keep your bubble in healthy form. Sometimes all you have to do is use a different soap and make a new kind of bubble. 

No thought, idea, dream or hope is complete without passion coupled with compassion, reflection, respect, hard work, applying lessons learned and going internal to pull from your strength, faith and experience.  And even if your bubble bursts on its own…. This is NOT failure.  That’s the way to let it be, because IT IS MEANT TO BE….timing or circumstance which isn’t in alignment with your life’s pathway.  It will self-destruct when the time is meant for you to blow a new one.  You are an endless bubble machine.  You can always create new bubbles. 

The reality is that if you are too consumed by what someone did to your bubble instead of appreciating the rainbow of iridescence each bubble has, you are missing the very important beauty within having a bubble at all.

Sometimes the art of bubbling peaceful being within involves taking the time to appreciate moments by isolating them within a bubble.  Life is not about making each bubble materialize into anything sometimes other than recognizing that there is one. It’s what makes us feel alive. 

We need to have an out of body experience to understand and take a look from the outside in as much as the inside out to comprehend the beauty of freedom…freedom to think, freedom to feel, freedom to create, freedom to have an idea, dreams, hopes and thoughts independently of having them actually go anywhere.  

Not every dream is meant to be realized in achievement form.  Sometimes the art of dreaming is to inspire us to keep dreaming.   Sometimes having hope is simply a reminder that it exists, that hope is necessary to life and to pursue life. 

If we put a bubble in proper perspective (yes, they are sometimes meant to be popped), we can achieve balance and peaceful being even more.  Not being so emotionally attached to every bubble is a good thing.  It allows us to breathe and take a moment to see that everything that happens leads to something else.  It is part of our journey to NOT fixate on the bubble. 

Life has beautiful bubbles within it.  Too often we put importance and emphasis on our own ego, rather than understanding we just received a gift from the broken bubble itself.

We have the power to blow more bubbles.  But we actually become even more powerful if we choose to watch the bubble float away and burst without reacting negatively, let it go, let it be free and instead cherish the fact we were alive to see the beauty in that moment, because we chose to make it a good thing instead.

~ Athena & Tess – We Solved It

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