4. Years. Ago. I was walking the streets on a dry, hot, dismal night in a small suburb of Calgary Alberta Canada. I was there as a proselyting missionary to share the message of Jesus Christ with anyone… literally anyone who would listen. That night my companion and I walked home after a long day of knocking on doors and sweating when we saw a woman on the sidewalk. My companion told me she felt inspired to approach her and tell her she was a daughter of God. She looked nice, pretty, bright-faced, dressed up somewhat scantily though the day was very hot. Ultimately she looked willing to talk which is why I thought to myself “Why not talk to this super normal-looking person standing on the side of the road.” We began a conversation and passionately shared with her that she was a daughter of God. She was receptive, and kind and nodded her head in agreement with everything we said. It was a miracle. I felt proud that we had most certainly changed her life. Suddenly, in the middle of our passionate speech about Jesus a sparkling, new, bedazzled vehicle pulled up right next to us and the woman. A wealthy, attractive, middle-aged man rolled down the window, exchanged some words with the woman, and then to my shock, the woman got in the car which immediately sped off into the sunset. I stood there for a long time, mouth open, hands hanging limply at my sides staring after the car. In my dazed state, I was able to piece together that the woman had not been a nice normal neighborly mother out for a sunset stroll but a prostitute waiting to be picked up for the night. At that point in my life 4 years ago I never anticipated meeting a real-life prostitute or that she wouldn’t look anything like the toothless hairless Fantine from Les Mis.
4. Months. Ago. I was on the small island of Samos Greece. It was three o’clock in the morning and I found myself standing in a circle with hundreds of Greeks on a pier on the banks of the Aegean Sea. I was attending a famed island wine festival in a small city called Ormos in an attempt to learn the local language. I was also one of the only people at that wine festival who didn’t drink a drop of alcohol. The Greek song Το πλατανιοτικο Νερο was playing on what felt like a 5-hour loop while Greeks, tourists, and myself danced in a circle. The man on my right was the most intoxicated person I had ever seen. He had crossed his wine limit 5 hours earlier but somehow found a way to keep going. I didn’t know how he was even standing… oh wait he wasn’t he was using me and the other poor woman on his right to maintain some kind of footwork for the dance. I felt a trickle down my back… more than sweat… and realized it was his 78th glass of wine being poured directly down my back. I looked up at the stars, chuckling at the bizarre liquids I was covered in, and decided that I would continue to dance with the crazy Greeks until dawn. At that point in my life 4 months ago I had never anticipated that I would be at a Greek island wine festival dancing in a circle completely sober and covered in wine.
4. Weeks. Ago. I was sitting in an opera box at the Metropolitan Opera Club in New York City. I was completely decked out for the occasion wearing a dark green chiffon gown with a skirt big enough to fit 8 small children underneath. I was also wearing long white opera gloves, strings of pearls, and high heels that fell off my feet every time I had to descend the red-carpeted staircase just like Cinderella. I was at the opera entirely by luck and graciousness of a friend whose deepest desire was for me to have a powerful aesthetic experience watching Wagner’s Tannhauser Live. That night at the opera I dined on the finest meats, cheeses, and chocolates stamped with the words Metropolitan Opera Club. I sat down for the first act next to two gentlemen dressed in pristine tuxes. You could tell they had been regular opera goers for years especially when one said to the other after looking around disapprovingly “What a shame there are empty seats at the opera tonight” Then to my surprise, they both literally “tsked” in disapproval… Not for fun but in all seriousness because the opera had the audacity to have open seats at Wagner’s Tannhauser on a Tuesday night. At that point in my life 4 weeks ago I never could have imagined that I would be listening to a 4-hour opera in a language I didn’t understand, accidentally falling asleep for 3 1⁄2 minutes of the second act and using my binoculars to hide my face multiple times as I chuckled at the aggressive tsking from the professional opera goers.
I’m telling you all of these stories for a few reasons…
A little bit because I like to talk about my life experiences…
A little bit because I’m showing off that I know how to pronounce stuff in Greek and lived on a cool island…
And a little bit because I loved the opera so much….
But the questions I’ve asked myself time and time again based on these experiences are… would the formal wealthy tsking opera goers approach the prostitute for a good conversation, or dance with drunk Greeks in the middle of the night at an island wine festival OR would the prostitute ever find any kind of value in attending a German opera or the Greeks find any sort of way to avoid a tsk from the opera goers.
The problem with us today is that we find the culture we belong to and we get comfortable not realizing the boundless cultural opportunities that exist outside of our bubble. While you always hear “get a thicker skin,” or “toughen up,” or “life’s tough get a helmet” or “gird up your loins” I want to advocate for something a little different. Today I want to inspire you to go out and get a “thinner bubble.”
In 2012 Charles Murray wrote a book called “Coming Apart” a book that was surprisingly not about America’s political problems but cultural. He writes about a new kind of segregation where people are likely to have different preferences in books, movies, different ways of spending their free time, different friends, and differences in a dozen other aspects of life simply based on where they grew up and how they’ve lived their lives. This is different from early America where Alexis De Tocqueville wrote “In the United States, the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people. On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they speak to them every day.”
In America, the upper classes, the rich, the elite, used to interact with normal Americans every day. They knew the lives, problems, and habits of these people and were able to make governmental decisions on the information they collected. Today is much different.
Murray writes “The danger increases that the people who have so much influence on the course of the nation have little direct experience with the lives of ordinary Americans, and make their judgments about what’s good for other people based on their own highly atypical lives.” Both Charles Murray and me Ari Johnson think this is a problem… not just politically but culturally.
Murray designed a quiz to expose you to your own cultural ignorance. He calls the quiz “How Thick is Your Bubble?”
Here are some of the questions…
- Have you ever lived for at least a year in an American neighborhood in which the majority of your 50 nearest neighbors did not have college degrees?
- Have you ever walked on a factory floor?
- Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?
- Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?
- Have you ever had a close friend who could seldom get better than Cs in high school even if he or she tried hard?
- During the last month have you voluntarily hung out with people who were smoking cigarettes?
- Have you ever done either of these for a trip of 50 miles or more?
- -Ridden on a long-distance bus
- – Hitchhiked
There are more questions that ask how many times you’ve eaten at certain restaurant chains such as Applebee’s, Denny’s, Chili’s, or Outback Steakhouse.
There are others that ask how many of these TV shows you watch regularly, American Idol, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewife, or Survivor.
The higher you score on this test the thinner your bubble and the more likely you are to relate to a wide variety of normal Americans. It might seem simple, if you grew up rich you have a thick bubble, if you grew up middle class you’ll have a thinner bubble, but something the test points out is that you can be a non-elite American but still live in a very thick bubble.
If you’re wondering what the score is of a homeschooler raised in Utah I’ll tell you it’s not very high. Most of us probably grew up reading all kinds of books, we were smart, intelligent, and willing to learn but according to Murray’s test that doesn’t necessarily mean you can relate to a wide variety of people. You might know your pre-calculus, basic Latin, the wars of the 20th century, and Tom Sawyer but that doesn’t mean you’re cultured.
It doesn’t mean you’ve had a job that exhausted you at the end of the day, that you’ve interacted with ex-cons and addicts, that you’ve seen a third-world country, or that you know the lyrics to at least 3 Taylor Swift songs. Being educated doesn’t always include experiences volunteering at your local Habitat for Humanity or homeless shelter. Being educated can sometimes thicken your bubble leading you straight into a highly atypical lifestyle that is far from the life of an average American. No matter how many books you read, you still might not be able to connect with someone unless you have a shared experience with them.
The whole point of being more cultured is that it brings you closer to other people, it expands your sphere of influence and teaches you more about yourself and the world. Your ability to connect with, learn from, and teach other people is directly related to how cultured you are. Without cultural literacy, we will come apart from our neighbors, friends, and even family members. Having shared experiences with people around you will require you to do things that are uncomfortable or stupid, things that are not super useful to you personally. It might require you to play a little bit of Minecraft so you can have a conversation with 10-20-year-old boys, or watch an old Carey Grant movie even if the language is difficult so you can talk to your grandmother. It might mean trying a taco from Del Taco even if it grosses you out so that you can relate to the stomach issues of a 19 yr old college student to lives on a diet of root beer and tacos. Connecting with others comes as a result of doing things you never thought you would do.
I never imagined what a Canadian prostitute really looked like or what she could teach me about reality.
I never imagined I could be so delighted to dance with Greeks covered in wine.
I never imagined how much I would enjoy a 4-hour opera sung in German.
We have the capacity to not just enjoy but learn from both high and low culture. You don’t need a certain amount of cash money to attend an event at your local library, you don’t need to have authentic strings of pearls to see an opera, you don’t have to be an immigrant to pick fruit from the fields, or be an alcoholic to dance like a crazy person.
Don’t get too comfortable where you are or where people tell you you’re supposed to be.
Get a Thinner Bubble.
Where you were born and the way you were raised does not impose any kind of lifestyle on you.
As Kipling once wrote
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!