How to discover if you have something worth sharing

(6 min reading)

Yesterday, I had dinner with strangers. There were four other people whom I had never seen in my life.

We were brought together by an algorithm that groups strangers for dining with the goal of meeting new people and having conversations outside of our own bubbles.

In the last few years, especially during the last few months, I have struggled with the question, "Do I have anything worth saying? Or anything worth sharing at all?"

I'm not questioning my value as a human being, but I have felt many times like there was no value in sharing my perspective based on my life and work experience overall.

Well, last night's dinner taught me a lot about that.

What's your bubble?

“What motivated you to come here today?” I asked to one of them.

“To break out of my bubble” he answered.

"What's your bubble like?”

“That's a good question. I'm not sure.”

In simple words, a bubble is your social circle, your work circle, your neighbourhood, the places you go.

I guess that the curious thing about bubbles is that you don't realize you're in one. And we all are in one or multiple bubbles. There's no way to scape that. I think that the only difference is how aware you are of your bubble and the impact it has on your life.

I, for example, love my bubble. It's everything I love and more. But I have come to reflect on the past few months and noticed that, despite the fact that it fulfils me in some ways, it is also hurting me in other ways.

No, wait. My bubble is not hurting me. My behavior of not getting in contact with other things besides my bubble is.

How so?

Usually we call it bubble because we tend to perceive the whole world as an extension of ourselves and our lives. We get the impression that we see and experience all there is to see and experience.

Throughout this year I started to feel a lack of new stimulus, challenges, and inputs to entertain my creativity, thoughts and ideas.

This resulted in me forming a negative perception about myself:

“I have nothing worth saying or contributing”

“Everyone knows what I know.”

"Who am I to write about this?”

It made me feel boring and small.

Until I went to dinner with strangers.

From the 3 hours of conversation we shared, the most surprising thing for me was to realize that…

Wait, are you ready?

Please, don't fall out of your chair. Hold your phone tight.

This was my breakthrough:

There are people in the world (99.9% of them in fact) who have completely different lives than mine.

Shocking right? Who would have thought of that?

Jokes aside, this is something that we all know rationally (in our minds). Most of us can entertain the idea of thinking and imagining different ways and experiences of living. But we don't FEEL (in our hearts) it unless we consciously expose ourselves to these interactions.

The bubbles in the room

My table was composed of one English investigative journalist, an American journalist focused on government and institutions, a Portuguese woman who worked at IKEA (she didn't share much about that), and another Portuguese woman who used to be a nutritionist and ended up working for a pharmaceutical company running tests for drug side effects.

The investigative journalist lived for 6 years in Africa, most of which were spent in Congo. She worked in the field, doing things that sounded exciting and a little dangerous.

While she talked, I became more and more intrigued, not only because of her great stories, but also because of her attitude. It seemed like she didn't think what she was sharing was interesting; it felt like something regular to her. Meanwhile, I sat across the table, thinking about how many crazy and fascinating stories she must have to share with us.

The American journalist casually mentioned that he had lived for a few years in Venezuela during the dictatorship. The English journalist suddenly became impressed and curious to learn more. The American happily answered her questions, but not with the same energy that matched her curiosity to learn more about his experience. He made it seem like it was not a big deal.

You might guess that the girl who works at Ikea probably doesn't have any stories of political conflict or experience with dictatorship to share. Does that make her less interesting? Not the case.

We were taken by surprise when we discovered that she was an expert in English history and was writing a fiction book. It was amusing to see the journalists (who are supposed to be proficient writers) asking her about her writing routine and habits. They shared with us how they wished they could write a book but didn't know how to start or what to write about. They asked her how many words she would write a day and how to build a better writing habit.

From the nutritionist, we heard a love story and exchanged points of view on her current struggle: she didn't know if she wanted to have kids or not. She felt pressured to make a decision because of her biological clock. On some level or another, this is something that all women at that table could relate to, and spending a good time talking about it made everyone feel a little less lonely in the matter, as well as ponder new perspectives.

What an interesting life is in the first place?

During the dinner, there was a questions game. A list of questions to spark conversations between the guests.

"What kind of legacy do you want to leave to the world?” was the last question.

As they hear it, I saw their eyes rolling and faces of disgust.

It was too of a big questions and somehow overwhelming for people who just wanted to have a fun, enjoyable and easy night. For some reason, their reactions smelled “pressure” to me.

But then a thought came on my mind. "Wait, what does this even mean to us?" I kept going:

“I guess that there's an invisible message around us telling us that to make something meaningful out of our lives, we have to do something that is grandiose in the eyes of society. Which is a big by product of the time and generation we live in (hello capitalism). If you don't save the planet, or build a million dollar business, or become an activist, or get elected person of the year, it's like you're not doing enough.”

They nodded with their heads in agreement.

"But what if we focused instead on building small meaningful lives for ourselves?” What if instead of focusing on saving the world, we decided to be just present to our families and friends, and engage with our interests and passions? Wouldn't that mean to live a mark in OUR world?"

Because that's what most of us are already doing anyway, but we don't feel that's enough. Because there's this constant pressure (from the invisible society) that we should be doing more, bigger, greater.

When we measure ourselves against an invisible meter, we become so not interesting and our lives so boring and so small. Because the bar is blurred, no one can really see it and nothing will ever be enough. Which opens up another topic of conversation about how in the first place we should not even been measuring ourselves in any ways besides if we are contempt with the path we're taking. But I will leave this to another piece.

“I would like to write a book, not sure about what yet”

Said the investigative journalist.

I told them about this interview I had seen on instagram with a street sweeper in Switzerland, who has been doing that for over 37 years, he is still active in his metier and he was talking about a book he wrote about his work, which he said was not much considered by people, but which he found amazing.

Their faces lit up in surprise. “Really? I want to read this book” said one of them.

Who would say that a street sweeper has such interesting things to say? I'm glad he did, because he got me and so many other people curious to learn more about the way he sees and experience life and his work.

This entire experience has shown me that when I perceive myself as irrelevant, small, or uninteresting, it is because I have been trapped in my own bubble of sameness for too long.

Most things that are obvious to us, are foreign to others

As we live in our bubbles, we have a natural tendency to think of the world as an extension of our own experiences.

We know rationally that there are different people out there, with different ways of living, different choices, and different chances. However, while we're in our bubble, we only see ourselves, which I've come to learn is a quite limiting experience.

We measure our self-perception, our worth, our contribution, and our interesting factor against a blurred message and vague idea of what we should be doing with our lives, and we easily disconnect from what really matters to us. We lose perspective that what is obvious to us might be foreign to others.

Over the course of my short life, I have experienced something that I can prove to be true multiple times. However, apparently, I have not yet learned the lesson since I keep being reminded of it.

The lesson is: contrast helps.

Want to get better insights on whatever questions you're asking yourself?

Find contrast.

For me, at this time, it was to sit at a table and have a chat with strangers.

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Disclaimer: This piece was written by someone who does not have life figured out.