Many factors lead us to meet people and to bind ourselves to them in love or in friendship. Generally speaking, school, work and social gatherings such as community groups, unions and assorted associations are the classic channels through which we feed our network of relationships.
These environments, however, supply us with contacts without pause and without purpose. And so it happens that we no longer remember precisely how or why we met certain people. When it works out, we gain a friend or a love; when it fails, we draw a lesson from it.
One thing is sure and certain: life does no sorting when it sends people our way. In other words, it does not systematically select positive or negative individuals. The truth is that you receive a mixture of good and bad encounters.
So how do we filter? How do we make sure we keep the good seeds? How do we navigate effectively among the whole array of contacts we have?
This is where the notions of “bubble ”, “circle ” and “world ” come in. Although all three are circular in the collective imagination, they point to distinct realities, which we are going to examine.
According to the Larousse, a bubble is a small quantity of air, gas or vapour that takes on a spherical shape within a liquid or within a material that is molten (glass, metal) or has solidified. By analogy, a bubble stands for a restricted private space, given over to a single person or, at most, to a small group of two or three authorized individuals. And that very lightness is what lets the bubble rise and float away so easily.
The people authorized into the bubble are those who are capable of keeping a secret, in front of whom you can show yourself in your true light, before whom you can let your fears or your vulnerabilities show. You could even confess your faults without the fear of being judged. These people know you deeply and trust you almost blindly.
The circle, for its part, is identified with a closed plane curve all of whose points lie at an equal distance from a point recognized as the centre. It can also be defined as a group of people in the habit of gathering together; we speak, for instance, of a circle of friends.
You will have understood: the circle is wider than the bubble, and it holds the people with whom we collaborate, with whom we work, with whom we think through strategies or carry out projects. In other words, it is the team, or our collaborators.
The people who make up the circle possess attributes you need, diplomas that can help you or assets you would like to draw on. These people have a role and a usefulness that have been proven. You know you can count on them, but with a certain reserve. You know you can open up to them, but with a slight restraint. The members of the circle are trustworthy people too. Traitors, however, can emerge from it. Jesus’s circle was his disciples. And we all know how the story went with Judas.
Wider still than the circle, we have the world. Within the framework of our analysis, the world means the whole of the human community. It is the last level of widening and of distance among the people you know.
The world is made up of individuals you may have seen only once, or to whom one of your contacts simply passed along your number. They take an interest in you and in what you do. Sometimes your life looks to them like a miracle, a blessing or a model to follow. On social media, we call them "followers". They are the ones who make up your world. They sometimes hold high expectations of you while contributing nothing whatsoever to anything.
Recognizing these three dimensions carries a twofold importance.
First, it lets you see clearly where each of the people you know stands around you. You know, for instance, whom you let into your bubble. You know the role they play there. And, beyond everything else, you know how to control the composition of your bubble. When you sense there are too many people in it, it may be time for another sorting.
Second, this recognition lets you know the place you occupy and the role you play in other people’s lives. That matters a great deal. From the treatment reserved for you, you know whether you are filed in someone’s bubble, in their circle, or merely in their world. Realizing — and above all accepting — the place and the role you have been given helps you stop forcing relationships, and therefore helps you avoid frustration. That advantage is not at all negligible either.
Once we have realized that these three dimensions exist, it is just as important to master the movement between them. The study of the movement between the bubble, the circle and the world will be the subject of the second part of this article.
M. Z.
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