Bubbles and abundance
On a beach vacation recently, I had a revelation about soap bubbles.
My 3-year-old nephew had a plastic toy gun that dispensed rapid-fire bubbles. One quiet evening on a patio facing the Atlantic Ocean as the sun set, he pulled the trigger and 100 or so bubbles streamed out in frantic exodus.
Of course, it took only a few shots before the bubble gun was empty, he was bored and he dropped the gun to move on to the next mini-adventure. That’s what toddlers do.
The bubble gun is a far different toy than the single loop-head wand many of us grew up with. We would dip the wand in the liquid soap and blow through the loop releasing a handful of bubbles at a time — or if you blew lightly maybe a single large bubble.
Despite the advance in bubble-blowing technology, I think the old way might be better. Here’s why:
The wonder and enjoyment of soap bubbles isn’t in the quantity of them, experiencing a mosaic of a bubble jet-stream. Instead, it’s in tracking the appearance and personality of a single newborn bubble. Which colors would reflect off the bubble? How did it dance in the breeze as it floated skyward toward certain demise? How long would it live before the pop?
When watching a single bubble, you don’t dare create new ones until you knew answers to those questions. That’s because witnessing the answers to those questions *is* the enjoyment of bubbles. The pleasure lies in the cognitive closure of experiencing the entire five-second wondrous lifetime of the bubble.
And so it can be with money and stuff.
If one is good, 100 must be better, we think. Ask most people how much money they need and the answer is simple, more. Just more.
We have multiple wristwatches, video games, shoes and sweaters of the same color. Our houses have more square feet, our cell phones more functions and our cars more luxury.
Striving not only for abundance, but for over-abundance, is often praised in this country as healthy ambition. But at what cost?
Sometimes, the enjoyment of owning one is diminished by half when you acquire another. So all the money and energy you exerted in acquiring the second was for naught.
I think the next time I’m faced with the urge to create 100 soap bubbles, I’ll instead create just one. It might be more satisfying.
