I think a lot about superpositions. I don’t claim to be a die-hard science geek, but I do flirt with the occasional layperson’s physics books. Carl Sagan, David Grinspoon, Stephen Hawking, Neil to the Dee G T! Superpositions tell me how to understand competing truths, infinite possibilities, and things that just defy logic. There are many great laws we’ve made to make sense of the universe, but I tend to latch onto one at a time and obsess over it.
Prior to this one, as a younger man, I fell deeply in love with how the rules of entropy determine everything in the physical world. The idea of borrowed energy to create order, in a sea of slow decay into disorder, the inevitable heat death of the universe, as they say, well, that tells me everything I need to know about my practical day. Borrow energy all around you, stick it in your pocket of order whenever you can. Just know, all those spinning plates will fall back down over time.
Keep borrowing, create small blocks of order, stay vigilant against chaos, keep slapping duct tape and band-aids over your daily routines. It’s there for the taking, it all comes from the sun afterall, and it won’t mind for another 5 billion or so years. No wonder I need a haircut and nail clip today.
And now with superpositions, my newest latched-on truth, I can imagine more about what’s happening in quantum mechanics – essentially everything that doesn’t obey the logical rules from a human-scale point of view. Superpositions are merely the idea that on a particle level things aren’t in fixed positions or states of being, but exist in ways that are a bit ‘uncertain.’ Every particle that ever was, existed as vast waves of undetermined probabilistic states.
Even more profoundly, all of what we call reality is an illusion, suspended in wave functions, until our sheer act of conscious observation makes it collapse into something tangible, if only in our minds.
And this humbles me to think how fleeting and abstract that thing we call reality really is. More than the practical lessons of how to fight entropy to my daily advantage, the lesson with superpositions grounds me on a philosophical level. It keeps me asking any trivial question of what was and will be. Rather, it helps me appreciate the only truth that matters, one that has been solidified and locked into the present moment. That’s all that matters. The present moment alone.
So it’s with humility that I admit, last week was a gift of superpositions and present-state dwelling. It was a week of infinite indeterminability and gloriously vast possible outcomes. I got to feel a wash from modern anxiety, so driven by how we overthink the little forks in our road, and how they will shape our life. That desperate need we weird humans have to clutch tightly to the steering wheel and try to tell the cosmos what OUR plans are for the natural order. Laughable.
What was the gift? A stalled response to a heavy job interview selection process. That’s all. It was a big role with a big firm. It represented a move to London, a push to upskill myself, the opportunity to polish up, the chance to suit up and get back into the fray of the corporate elite. Many worlds, many lives and versions of my future self, exploding to multitudes of possibilities. The possibilities of my best self.
I’ve been here before, casting my net out to the world, waiting to see what I reel back. Often, I was feeling like the world had cast a cold eye on me. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, perhaps it’s me that feels some rush when turning my back on a set course. Perhaps I’ve fallen in love with limbo, and relish the peace that comes with imagined worlds unfolding into meaning with every possible action I take.
And so when a recruiter says “they’ve paused on a process, and your patience is appreciated,” I can’t help but feel like Schroender’s cat. Without a yes or a no on whether I’m going to upend my life and embrace this new job, I can suspend myself in a calm wash of every possibility and none of them, all at once. I have become a wave function, creator of worlds.
Again I’ve been here before, but in the past, this has fueled horrible anxiety. Who likes waiting for good or bad news, right? But this time, I was so relieved. I put my best foot forward for what was an incredibly competitive position, and I eked my way onto a very exclusive shortlist, amongst some other extremely impressive profiles. I was flattered to have made it this far, it was a validator not a pressure squeeze. I wasn’t expecting the worst case news. I wasn’t expecting to land the job. Nor was I expected to be showered with fresh validation of how much the world owed me.
Most importantly, I was spared the anguish of having to check my phone every minute, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the email that would close this loop for me. I knew nothing would change in that week ahead, so I had the week to just, well, let it be. And that soothed me with a comfort that I don’t know many people get to feel in this life.
A week of being present. A week of feeling a dash of hope, without trespassing on the future. And it was pure joy. I had no expectations other than to just live my life. Nothing critical demanded my attention, and nothing taunted me with guilt. I did not sync into inertia, nor did my mind go wild with frantic ‘just in case’ planning. I let it all go, and lived my life in the present, sparing no thought to what I could’ve done differently, or the ‘what ifs’ of next week. I lived more leisurely, cycling around for pleasure, taking extra time at the gym to stretch. I journaled and reflected over rich coffee at local cafes, I took the long walk home, I embraced the spontaneous. I lingered longer in moments, listened more, and reacted less.
It was a peace of mind I hadn’t felt in a long time. I could’ve spent this time conjuring up the abstract worlds of my future, the many possibilities waiting. But instead, I focused on crafting the one world, the present world of graceful intentions.
As I write this now, I’m one weekend past learning that I did not get the role. It’s news I previously would’ve taken poorly, robbing me of my protected self-respect. Today, it feels less jolting. It was just another collapsed superposition into one determined and directed future course heading.
Perhaps that decision was always coming, or perhaps the decision was on a knife’s edge of sensitive dependencies. Perhaps in an alternate universe, a butterfly flapped its wings in Japan, and I got an offer to move to London. Perhaps that version of me goes down a better path, or a darker one. Perhaps at our core, we’re both pretty much the same, living out slightly different lives.
What does it matter? While in last week’s state of endless outcomes, I made a healthy decision to not be overrun with the dread that often plagues people during uncertain times. I chose to embrace the uncertainty, and in doing so I felt an out-of-body serenity in imbuing a beautifully fragile moment with meaning.
And it makes me wonder, what was really different about that week compared to any other present state moment in anyone’s life? Other than the inflated importance and consequence we attribute to decisions, we can all free ourselves by the unbearable weight of the infinite possibilities that lie in our future. We can all hit pause on our knee jerk impulse to respond and react to every possible outcome coming our way.
We’re all on different collision courses we can’t predict. And while planning for the future has its place, it’s foolish to believe tighter control is the answer. We have this power to shed the suffering of the unknowable. We are able to bottle the magic and feel its nourishing power. We only have to surrender to the ‘now’, and believe in that small instant, frozen outside of space and time, we are immortal and endless. And in times like this, our choice defines our reality. So why not choose to make our reality one suspended in a life everlasting.
Paul Carreo 