“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” – so they say. Do you think it’s true? I haven’t really thought about it until recently.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time with a new group of people because of a project I’m doing at work. While working on this project, they’ve became my lunch partner almost on a daily basis. We seemed to be getting along fine until we started to discuss about recent happenings.
To give you some background, we discussed a range of topics from US election, Jakarta’s Governor, until LGBT. Serious stuffs to be discussed over lunch, I know… perhaps because we could not find any other topics that we are all aware of.
However – our discussions never turned into a messy debate. In fact we never debated, because most of the time they would all have a specific point of view, in which, I don’t actually agree but decided to nod and smile anyway to avoid conflict.
I mean don’t get me wrong, there are times that I would speak up, but for this case I’d rather keep my silence because, hey, it’s just a harmless lunch discussion!
But anyway, with that happened, I began to realise – all this time I’ve been living in a bubble! A bubble of similar like-minded people which I call my family and friends. I do respect and celebrate differences though, no doubt about it, it’s just I barely have daily interactions with a group of people that don’t share my way of thinking….
In the end, I’m glad that I got the chance to interact with them, my so-called colleagues whom I don’t share a point of view with. That way I can learn, observe, and of course, celebrate our differences with a big, big, smile. 😀
When was the last time you hang out with a person not from your bubble? What was it like?
Christa Bercerita 
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend asked me to go hang out with him and his friends in a local bar. There, I met one like-minded person and another guy who was so different from me! We engaged in a debate, well… my boyfriend and I were basically observing these two people debating on several things, but what I really liked about it was that they were debating about important ideas (read: discussions), not talking about people. I also kept nodding and smiling because I didn’t really like to voice my concerns in front of people whom I just knew, but bottom line… it’s really nice to engage in group discussions that discuss ideas and not people.
Agree Tal, it’s nice to discuss about ideas not people, unfortunately it’s a rare thing here in Jakarta’s social life.. right? hehe
Righttttt, yang ada malah ngomongin orang hahaha
New York is definitely a bubble, a bubble so big and rich that you constantly bumped into different people. Lots of weirdos too. But bubble is a bubble, we are mind-like to some extent. So, mostly when I spent time with Indonesians, that’s when I hang out outside my bubble. Just like you, most of the time I become an observer and stay quiet before I speak up. But still, the New Yorker in me is learning now how to be articulate without being judgemental. It is not so bad after all to have opinions 😉
New York sounds awesome Dit 🙂 Perhaps one day I’ll peek into its bubble 😀
It was respectfully agree to disagree situation. We went on talking about music and food afterwards 😀
Talking about music, and food especially, can’t go wrong hehehe
emang selalu seneng kalo bisa interaksi sama orang2 baru, denger opini2 baru ya… jadi kitanya jadi lebih terbuka juga… terlepas kita setuju atau gak.. tapi anything kan bisa jadi masukan kalo diliat dari sudut pandang yang baru….
Iya betul Man, seneng juga aku jadinya bisa dapet perspektif baru.. gak monoton doang kan kayak pake kacamata kuda hehehe
Saya pribadi feel free untuk bertemu atau ngumpul dengan orang baru. Suka saja si, bisa dengar banyak hal baru karena pikiran orang pasti beda-beda. Nilai plusnya bisa sekalian belajar hal baru juga.
Betul Wien, jadinya lebih terbuka ya kayak kata Arman di komen 🙂
Iya kak karena lebih enak seperti itu tapi ya memang engga semua orang bisa seperti itu juga si..
This “bias” is true. Indeed sometimes we extrapolate what we encounter on the daily basis (our bubble) to the whole world, while our observation is actually only in the bubble.
Very true, Ko!
Seringkali..rasanya biasa saja. Berusaha memahami saja kenapa orang bisa berbeda pandangan. Kalau pun masih belum bisa memahami, itu bukan masalah besar. Asal tahu saja.
Iya kita ngga usah paham dan apalagi setuju ya, yg penting tahu, dan menerima perbedaan. Toh itu bikin kita jadi makin “kaya” ya kan? hehehe