The bubble

It may well be that the thought of it came from Democritus, the laughing philosopher, the mocker of everything. Or it may have come from his teacher, Leucippus, credited to be the founder of atomism. Wikipedia tells us both lived around 460 B.C. in the Greek classical age. They figured that everything was constructed of tiny bits of matter that could not be further subdivided.

Imagine taking a stick and then dividing this in two. Throw the other half away. But the half in hand? Divide that as well. And keep doing it until you can divide no further. This is the atom.

They were, of course, both wrong. But only to the extent that the atom could not be further subdivided. We are more inclined now to see how the subdividing of anything into still smaller units can only be a limitless enterprise. All it takes is a sharper and keener device for looking at and dividing things. But where they were right — the fact of atoms — they were surprisingly very right. And some say this must have been only a lucky hypothesis. There would have been no way of knowing the fact of atoms at that time, unless by pure reasoning; which is, of course, what philosophy is.

And so it is something of a charming tale, the way the early philosophers predate contemporary discussions of phenomena like: void, empty space, which cannot really be empty, otherwise: how can it be there?

One guesses they were only story tellers. And there must have been many of them who made a living from entertaining a few of the populace with thoughts of how things are or may possibly be. We read how not everyone was entertained by all these, and how philosophers and other story tellers sometimes had to pay for their thoughts with their lives.

One supposes things have not changed much over the years. And it may well be that all of us live on the bubble surface of truths too deep for us to see. There is a discussion somewhere of the difference between those things we perceive with our senses and those we can only think out through reason. And of these two, the latter is allegedly the truer.

But perhaps we go too deep into the issue. Better to stay, if only for now, at the bubble surface. This surface is beautiful. And we may well imagine each other like bubbles floating in space. See how the surface becomes rainbows when the light hits it a certain way. And then see how it flies with the wind.

It is only water, really, with a tensile strength that evens itself out on the surface, one water molecule holding on to the next until it forms a complete sphere; not exactly perfect, for it moves with pressures and currents of air. It dances this way and that. Beautiful.

Such as that life is beautiful, even when it is not self-aware, or even conscious of the void inside it. And since it has been said that void is impossible, then we must ask: What truly is a bubble?

A bubble is not a simple thing.

It is only when we exist at the bubble surface where things look seemingly simple. But we know this to be a tenuous simplicity. At the bubble surface, we deal with the foibles of life: deadlines, obligations, the nervous excitement with the mundanities of daily existence, which we correctly suspect is constructed of absurdities, such as the absurdity of daily wages. At the bubble surface, we are more aware of our fears, the fact of every bubble bursting in due time.

And so we feel here, and from time to time, the excusable urge to go deeper into our own personal bubbles. And as we do this, in a way, searching for our centers, we begin to see how the bubble is all around us. We begin to see that the bubble is not just its surface. There is a deeper space inside all of us. And it is not at all empty. It is not void, just because it is invisible.

It is from here where we can tell ourselves the true nature of life: us and everything else. We are more comfortable here. We do not feel here the continual and somewhat maniacal urge to interact with every little thing external to our bubbles. At the very center of this bubble, things become so much clearer. It is the bubble surface which becomes almost invisible to us. And then, we begin to ask: What about me which cannot be further subdivided? What and where is my atom? Who is my true I? Am I beautiful?

Really?

We stay here only for short moments. We cannot stay here forever, we think. But wouldn’t it be nice if we saw each other from deeper than our surfaces? But not, perhaps, for now: In due time, we feel the natural obligation to return ourselves back to the surface of things. To be with every other; who, like us, must float about in the outer voids, to live at the bubble surface, watching other bubble surfaces as they naturally exist. In this way, to live life, to operate, to exist, to comply with all the requirements of life; as much as possible, to not miss our deadlines.

Yet, as one must admit, we are less alone at the surface, even if mostly, we are lonely here; where we must feel, quite ironically, the most empty.