Bubble Scaffolding

"Well before the time by which the axioms of abstractive individualism were able to impose themselves, some psycho-philosophers of the early Modern times already understood that the inter-subjective space is filled with symbiotic, erotic, and mimetic-competitive energies that contradict fundamentally the illusion of the autonomous subject."

---P Sloterdijk
Spharen I. Blasen: Mikrospharologie

Because of Sloterdijk's book, I have been thinking about "Bubbles" for a few weeks now. (I am still processing the beautiful image that showed up in my dreams two weeks ago.)

Fittingly, several of Sloterdijk's ideas fly over my head. More importantly, they hover just long enough to resonate in my spirit. I comprehend the importance of the "bubble" (the rich inner world of the individual) and I believe in its undeniable relationship with other bubbles ("foam"), within a much larger sphere (the "globe"). All three exist in relationship, and cannot exist independently. (Now there's an ancient concept.)

In supervision this week, after successfully comprehending (and even "love[ing]"!) the most abstract treatment plan I've dared to write, my professor challenged me to "scaffold" with my treatment plan. (I know. Seriously. How did I get so lucky?) I awoke this morning, at 4am, and painted the Bubble Scaffolding image.

I am in the helping profession because I love people, and even I will readily admit I sometimes fantasize about just staying in my own bubble: It often begins when I sit alone in total darkness and let my thoughts and imagination just go. I paint in this space. I write there. I create there. I pretend it would affect noone if I forever indulged this uncensored, comfortable, deafening place. I am eventually humbled out of this state by my own thoughts and needs which prove the impossibility of my extreme selfishness. Even if I wanted to stay in my own bubble, something would inevitably pop me out. Even---no, especially---in a womb-like state, I still exist in relationship.

If not out of the goodness of our own hearts, or for the goodness of much larger things, then we might all be interested in the scaffolding of each others' tender bubbles out of the stark reality that our own existence depends upon it.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.