People have been telling me that I live in a bubble my whole life. First it was the suburban bubble and the childhood bubble. Then the boarding school and small town bubbles. Now the college bubble. I feel like it just never ends. Everything is another bubble. I thought getting a job would stop that whole conversation and pop the bubble, so to speak. I figured I would be entering the "real world” once I started making some money and doing my own thing, but apparently that’s not the case. So, my question is, what is the "real world?" When does someone leave the supposed bubble that they live in and enter this mysterious real world?

So far, I’ve only really been able to come up with one logical answer: there’s no such thing as the "real world.” It just doesn’t exist. At least, not in the sense that most people would consider it real. You never leave the bubble. Someone is always going to try to tell you that you’re too sheltered or too out of the loop from the rest of the world. Screw that. Everyone has different life experiences. Everyone comes from different places and has had a million different situations thrown at them. Everyone lives in their own personal bubble! If you live in the city, you live in a bubble. If you live in the country, you live in a bubble. You work at an office? Another bubble. You work from home? Yet another bubble. There are endless bubbles that we all live in.

Here’s the thing, the real world if an amalgamation of the bubbles that you live in. And no two people have lived the exact same life, so no two people have the same idea of what the real world is. So, you can’t tell someone that they don’t understand the real world just because they don’t fit in with your personal definition of what the “real world” is. Like I said earlier, I thought getting a job would catapult me into the real world, but nothing has really changed. I’ve just added another bubble to my life. All of the people there and the building itself fit into that. So, contrary to what people try to tell me, I’ve been in the “real world” this whole time. Because implying that someone is living in anything else makes it seem as though they’re living in some kind of fantasy land where they are cut off from everything else.

I don’t think this is too hard of a concept for people to understand, honestly. And if you only take one thing away from this whole article, let it be this: stop telling people that they don’t understand the real world. Stop invalidating people’s experiences just because you haven’t had the same ones. And finally, age makes no difference in the validity of someone’s experiences, so don’t think that you know better just because you’re older. Everyone makes mistakes and is always growing. So add a few more bubbles to your life. Keep moving forward.