An Insight
My fascination with quantum paradoxes popped up yesterday. I’d been mulling over two courses of action, ways in which my life would go one way or the other. One good, one bad, to me. An inflection point happened, I saw the path forward and as I did, I realized that tracing out and imagining my future was simply a way of holding alternate realities in my mind until the box was opened and the situation revealed.
The box in question is the one that held Schrödinger's cat, which is a good metaphor for life. You don’t know if the cat is dead or alive until you open the box just as you don’t know if the answer is yes or no until you make the call, or open the letter, or look out your window. In the meantime, both cases, yes and no, exist. Which I think is a situation most so-called over-thinkers already know, and why they mentally run the numbers all the time. It takes a lot of work to prepare for multiple futures.
In a way, I think I’ve known this all along and trained myself to deal with it. I don’t always make good decisions, of course, but imagining futures has helped me manage mine to a degree. Mostly it has to do with acceptance, knowing that things both good and bad are possible and mentally preparing for both. I guess that’s why I value planning and thinking ahead. I just wish I’d learned these lessons earlier in life, but as I’ve said before it’s better to acquire knowledge late than never.