Life is a Lava Lamp

Picture a Lava Lamp. Maybe it's one of the orange and red ones. The orange goo, thick and viscous. Suspended within a thinner red fluid. The heat from the electric element begins to warm the interior. 

With the growing heat, the orange goo rises, expands, and begins to move. The red liquid yields. Orange Bubbles break off and re-form. Red liquid fills the gaps, defining the space, and then yields again. As long as the heat remains, there follows a constant dance of give and take; expand and yield, define and dissipate. 

If you indulge me with this metaphor, we can see ourselves as the orange goo. The world around us, our social environment, becomes the red liquid. We all have a material presence, an inherent substance and viscosity. As we are alive, we have an inherent tendency to expand into the environment. (The degree of expansion, the weight and degree of substance are individual.)

The world around us also has inherent behavior to exist, to expand, to push back. 

Both also have the capacity to yield. As we move into a space, we imprint ourselves into that space. As soon as we imprint ourselves into the space, the space redefines itself to accommodate.  But the impression works both ways!

As much as we change and define the space around us, the space equally defines us. 

Our environment has its own degree of weight and expansion. Sometimes we find the environment yielding before us, sometimes it pushes back. Sometimes it does not yield at all.

When we encounter push back, think again of the liquid response. Water, when it encounters an obstacle in the environment, will circle back on itself. If we continue to add water to the situation, pressure will build. The water will become packed and dense; stronger. The environment changes the quality of the water. This “changed” water changes the conditions of the environment. If the environment now yields under the “changed” water, the water will continue on its way. 

But what if it doesn't. If the environment doesn’t yield easily, the water will either continue to change, or it doesn’t. If the “need” for the water to get through is less than the resistance of the environment, a new balance is reached. The system equalizes. 

Until the circumstances change: more heat, more water, increased “expansive” pressure, may find a way around, or over or under…it may simply seep through, slowly wearing the resistance down. 

Our living environment is not a binary condition of empty space and rigid obstacles. There is no empty space while we exist. The environment we move through is packed with influences and obstacles of varying degrees of weight and inherent expansion; push back. 

As much as we expand into the environment, the environment changes and defines us. There is no escaping this exchange, this dance. But it is just that: a dance. There are no absolutes beyond the fact that we exist. The environment we encounter can change us and shape us into stronger, more refined versions of ourselves. It need not be insurmountable. 

Our need may not overpower the environment, but it may pack our internal resolve and drive us to find liquid ways to continue our own expansive journey. Maybe we go around, or under. Or maybe we sit chilly and seep through. Softening the environment until it's not a matter of power or force or dominance, but a matter of yield. Of mutual changing. Respecting the structure of that which is “obstacle” can then become part of your own definition. Gaining strength from it, rather than expending it.

(Note: in cases of extreme ‘push-back’, violence, oppression, etc. Respecting the structure does not imply permission. Respecting the structure simply means recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of a thing as it is. And still gaining strength from it!)  

Just like the Lava Lamp, we live in a closed system. Any expenditure of energy by one is gained by the other. Picture again the lava lamp. Maybe now see yourself not as the orange unit of expansion, but as the red that yields. That receives and also defines. See it now, not as a dominance of the orange moving through the red, but as a mutual dance of expand and receive, yield and define.