What's Your Box?
I’ve never really been the “nerdy science kid.” Growing up, I was more drawn to the creative side of life—writing stories, designing worlds in my head, dreaming up alternate realities where logic bent to imagination’s will. Science wasn’t absent, but it lingered on the edges, something distant and almost untouchable. Seeing my senior mumble incomprehensible theories or use three pages of notebook deriving a three-lettred formula already repulsed me. And then, when I was about ten, some sort of demon—or maybe muse—found me.
Today, I stumbled upon an old diary entry that took me back to that moment. It was the first time I “discovered” quantum physics. Now, “discovered” might be a bit dramatic—I wasn’t exactly Max Planck or Niels Bohr, but in my own small world, it felt revolutionary. It all started with a movie, The Flash. Somewhere in its chaotic brilliance, they mentioned the philosopher’s stone and quantum physics, and I was hooked. At ten, I didn’t know the first thing about physics. Algebra alone felt like a mountain to climb and I was brewing in my little mind that I would be a writer or lawyer instead. But something about the way quantum physics was described—the mystery, the paradoxes—quite sat with me.
Even then, as a kid, the ideas felt like they were alive. I wasn’t analyzing them with any scientific rigor, but they planted themselves in my mind, refusing to leave. At first,the words stuck because I was obsessed with having bulky vocabularies in my ‘box’ of a brain.One concept stood out more than the rest: Schrödinger’s Cat. A cat that’s alive and dead at the same time until you open a box? It sounded absurd but also made my imagination spin. I liked-no,loved it.
Fast forward to today. Reading what I wrote about Schrödinger’s Cat as a child, I was struck by how much more sense it made now. It’s not just a physics experiment; it’s a philosophy, a way of looking at life itself. Schrödinger wasn’t just talking about a cat; he was talking about the very nature of existence—how we live suspended between possibilities until we take an action that defines reality.
But here’s the thing: Schrödinger’s Cat isn’t where this story ends for me. That’s where Dengar’s Cat comes in. If Schrödinger’s thought experiment is a neatly contained paradox, Dengar’s Cat is the messy, sprawling reality of being human.
The story goes like this: Dengar, a physicist, wanted to take Schrödinger’s concept further. Why limit it to a hypothetical cat in a box? He argued that life itself is the ultimate quantum superposition. We live in a constant state of possibility—every choice, every outcome existing simultaneously until we make a decision that collapses it all into one reality.
To explain this, Dengar told the story of his own cat, Persephone. One day, Persephone vanished. Was she stolen? Did she escape? Or was she curled up somewhere, perfectly safe? During the hours of searching, Persephone existed in all those possibilities at once. Alternate universes? I don't know. It wasn’t until Dengar found her—alive, missing, or otherwise—that the possibilities collapsed into one singular truth.
And isn’t that how life feels most of the time? We’re all constantly searching for our own versions of Persephone, swimming through a tangle of “what ifs” and “maybes.” Every step we take, every decision we make, opens another box, collapsing the infinite into the definite.
Thinking back to when I first encountered quantum physics, it wasn’t just the science that fascinated me; it was the connection to my own life. I remember thinking about how I was like the particles in quantum entanglement—connected to the people and places around me, my choices rippling outward in ways I couldn’t see. As a child, it felt poetic. As an adult, it feels profound.
The more I think about Dengar’s Cat, the more I see it as a metaphor for the uncertainty we all face. Life is messy. Outcomes are unpredictable. And yet, that’s where the beauty lies. The unknown isn’t just terrifying—it’s filled with potential. Every unopened box is a universe of possibilities waiting to unfold.
Today, quantum physics is still as fascinating to me as it was when I first scribbled about it in my diary. Back then, it was the mystery that captivated me in addendum to the fact that I now had something quite interesting to yab to my friends about. Now, it’s the perspective. Quantum physics is no longer just a scientific framework (I’m not even interested in the physics); it’s a philosophy, a way of seeing the world not as fixed and certain but as fluid and infinite.
And that brings me to you. What’s your box? What possibility are you waiting to collapse? Maybe, like me, you’re still searching for answers, still navigating the endless maybes.
But maybe, that’s okay. Because until we open the box, the future remains limitless. Don't ever forget that. Until you take the next action,the universe freezes and your next station is just one out of the infinite ones where you could be.