When we were little with messy faces and grass-stained knees, we’d blow bubbles and take great pride in popping them. With one touch, they vanished before the sun even began to sparkle rainbows on their soapy surfaces.
But somewhere along the road, we stopped bursting them and, instead, started filling them in.
To achieve my current place here in a desk in South Bend, Indiana, I filled in bubbles. Hundreds of them. Accompanied by a #2 pencil and college aspirations, I went through the assembly lines of standardized testing that Notre Dame students are all too familiar with. I perfected the art of penciling in scantrons and started to those precise little ovals. Thus began my fatal flaw of thinking inside the bubble.
Now, although I still encounter the occasional scantron, I’ve moved on to a different kind of bubble — the Notre Dame one. With its inclusive community and culture that is so uniquely Notre Dame, it is no wonder why we affectionately call this place as our “home under the dome.” I find solace in the comfort and safety I encounter on campus, sometimes to a level of naivety that includes leaving my laptop alone to fend for itself in the library (a move I would not recommend).
But often I fall so far into the comforts of this bubble that I forget that anything exists beyond the confines of this university. And no, I’m not just talking about Carroll Hall. I allow myself to be sheltered from the external world, failing to remember that we are but a small dot on a very large and very active map.
It shouldn’t take a Facebook post to remind me of our responsibility toward the thousands of Syrian refugees desperately seeking shelter. A random survey on politics shouldn’t trigger the realization that I have little to no idea of what’s currently happening on Capitol Hill, in the government of my own nation.
Popping our bubble means facing head-on the happenings of the world around us. This begins as simply as picking up a copy of the New York Times at the dining hall and scanning through the latest headlines, or signing up via email for the Skimm’s daily consolidated news blast.
Next the process continues with conversation. Join Notre Dame’s Headlines club. Chat with your friends about DART woes and football stats, but also toss some non-Notre Dame conversations into the mix every once in a while. Cultivate concern. Challenge yourself to talk about the topics that make your mind uncomfortable or tug heavily at your heart.
In light of recent tragedies, I’ve realized that optimism isn’t the same as blissful ignorance. It doesn’t have to be acting like life is a wonderfully cheesy musical where everyone falls in love and sings 85% of the time, and the only time it rains is when they’re already all conveniently twirling umbrellas.
Nope, sometimes we forget our umbrellas. And other times, it torrentially downpours when rain isn’t even in the forecast.
Real world optimism is recognizing that terrible things happen and forming a driven mindset of “what next.” Terrible things are happening right now, they happened in the past, and they WILL happen again.
We must realize this and seek an understanding of these events, asking ourselves, “Where do we go from here?” Optimism is reacting to painful occurrences with a burning desire to alleviate the pain or to make our next collective step a positive one.
So I would say I’d hate to burst your bubble, but I’d be lying. Burst it. I dare you. Together, let’s step out of ignorance and into conscious understanding.
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