Each and every one of us lives our lives in our own secluded bubble, some of us for a couple years, but some of us never escape. Most people are born, and grow up protected by their elders from the true antics that accompany society. Particularly in the early teen years, one tends to think of their lifestyle as the only viable way of existence, with no regard to the way the rest of the world around them lives and functions. In grown years, however, the bubble is used to suppress one's self from their true wants and desires of a life they often times envision, but never strive to attain. The bubble is a confining entity of sorts, that incarcerates your body and mind. Author John Green refers to this bubble in his novel Looking For Alaska. He calls it the labyrinth, and describes it's effects throughout the story. He claims, "You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present." These complex webs of desire, hurt, sacrifice, and lust, however, are more universal than one would anticipate. A crowded, busy city street could perhaps be one of the loneliest or most comforting places in the world, depending upon one's viewpoint. The setting itself connotes an undeniable and perpetual sense of sonder, or "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk," as defined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Regardless of one's status in society or any other social, emotional, or physical barriers, everyone shares the struggles of the labyrinth and how their complexities intertwine with those of the 7 billion people who surround them.
