I Feel Sometimes It Is All About Perspective
While washing my hands this morning, I started thinking about bubbles. As the warm water flows over the bar of soap, soap molecules get solubilized by the water, creating a slippery solution. This solution is helpful for cleaning dirt off of our bodies, and a side effect is that it changes the potential for surface tension. The increased surface tension potential, combined with many other factors, like momentum, gravity, atmopheric pressure, etc. creates the perfect dynamic to produce bubbles. These bubbles are really cool, and they are made of the same molecules that comprised the bar of soap, but now they are in a different situation and they are creating a bubble!
The bubble is more than just the spherical portion of the top... It is also all along the base, and making the corners. The soap molecules are not just at the top, they are (presumably) equally distributed around the entire "structure" of the bubble. We only see and appreciate the molecules at the top - while the ones at the bottom, and the corners - likely are larger in number, yet they receive little to no attention.
The molecule of soap that is at the bottom, in the middle - completely unheralded, is chemically the same as one from the top. The reason the molecule at the top is there, is purely because of chance. The molecule at the bottom, certainly has the POTENTIAL to be a molecule at the top. It just requires outside forces, like a drop of additional water to change the local dynamic for itself.
People are exactly the same. I feel like this soap molecule. I think some other cultures (meaning not USA) have long understood more about people; either innately or academically, and their culture has been built in a way to support the emotional well-being of the majority of the populous.
I think back to a picture I saw in a National Geographic magazine. It was an Indian man that works in the sewers of that country, and his "protective clothing" consisted of just a modified rag that created a pair of shorts. He was sitting on the edge of the sewer entrance, just finishing a portion of work. He was quite dirty, no shirt or pants or shoes, but what was he wearing?
A HUGE SMILE!!!! He was happy!
This picture has stuck with me over the years. If this man can be happy, we - as Americans, are completely confused. At least the culture the media makes me understand that we have in this country is confused.
Every job is worthy. In USA, somehow many jobs have become "undesirable" and it was attributed to the WORK, instead of the COMPENSATION. Any work is positive, it's just people decide they don't like the job, and therefore that type of work is undesired. They decide they don't like the job though, based upon the compensation offered. So it's not the work that's no good - it's the employers and the general judgement of that position.
Back to the bubble analogy... If a person grow up and has a banker father, the father will likely teach the child about credit and money and what he should do to create a good life. The father teaches the son how to make his way in the world. So, the banker's son becomes a portion of the top of the bubble. But, it's only because of where he started and the environment surrounding him. If you take that same child, but put him in a household where the father is a drug dealer, or he is a migrant farm worker - well, he's going to end up doing what he is taught to do. He will learn to be a migrant farmer, unless there are outside influences that change his course. Along the same lines, if a child is born into a family of terrorists, or surrounded by other child-soldiers, then the child will grow into that label.
If we are all so malleable and equivalent - on the broad scale - then why is the system so unfair? We pretend we have some sort of a meritocracy, but it is anything but that.
I believe we have loads of potential. We are like a HUGE piece of soap, but right now everything has coalesced into this one, super huge bubble. It keeps growing and growing, but I pray soon it pops. Then other forces allow the majority of the population to start making some new bubbles.
The bubble is more than just the spherical portion of the top... It is also all along the base, and making the corners. The soap molecules are not just at the top, they are (presumably) equally distributed around the entire "structure" of the bubble. We only see and appreciate the molecules at the top - while the ones at the bottom, and the corners - likely are larger in number, yet they receive little to no attention.
The molecule of soap that is at the bottom, in the middle - completely unheralded, is chemically the same as one from the top. The reason the molecule at the top is there, is purely because of chance. The molecule at the bottom, certainly has the POTENTIAL to be a molecule at the top. It just requires outside forces, like a drop of additional water to change the local dynamic for itself.
People are exactly the same. I feel like this soap molecule. I think some other cultures (meaning not USA) have long understood more about people; either innately or academically, and their culture has been built in a way to support the emotional well-being of the majority of the populous.
I think back to a picture I saw in a National Geographic magazine. It was an Indian man that works in the sewers of that country, and his "protective clothing" consisted of just a modified rag that created a pair of shorts. He was sitting on the edge of the sewer entrance, just finishing a portion of work. He was quite dirty, no shirt or pants or shoes, but what was he wearing?
A HUGE SMILE!!!! He was happy!
This picture has stuck with me over the years. If this man can be happy, we - as Americans, are completely confused. At least the culture the media makes me understand that we have in this country is confused.
Every job is worthy. In USA, somehow many jobs have become "undesirable" and it was attributed to the WORK, instead of the COMPENSATION. Any work is positive, it's just people decide they don't like the job, and therefore that type of work is undesired. They decide they don't like the job though, based upon the compensation offered. So it's not the work that's no good - it's the employers and the general judgement of that position.
Back to the bubble analogy... If a person grow up and has a banker father, the father will likely teach the child about credit and money and what he should do to create a good life. The father teaches the son how to make his way in the world. So, the banker's son becomes a portion of the top of the bubble. But, it's only because of where he started and the environment surrounding him. If you take that same child, but put him in a household where the father is a drug dealer, or he is a migrant farm worker - well, he's going to end up doing what he is taught to do. He will learn to be a migrant farmer, unless there are outside influences that change his course. Along the same lines, if a child is born into a family of terrorists, or surrounded by other child-soldiers, then the child will grow into that label.
If we are all so malleable and equivalent - on the broad scale - then why is the system so unfair? We pretend we have some sort of a meritocracy, but it is anything but that.
I believe we have loads of potential. We are like a HUGE piece of soap, but right now everything has coalesced into this one, super huge bubble. It keeps growing and growing, but I pray soon it pops. Then other forces allow the majority of the population to start making some new bubbles.
