Schrödinger's Box

Letter Zero 37

Dear friend,

I woke up thinking about Schrödinger's cat. My version of the paradox goes like this...

There’s a cat trapped in a metal box that’s rigged with poison. There’s a 50% chance the cat will die, but maybe not. From the outside you have no way of knowing if the cat is alive or dead. You have to open the box to find out. Until that moment the cat is both alive and dead. Reality is forced to decide what it wants to become as a direct result of your observation. 

I’ve stripping out the quantum mechanics details of Schrödinger's parable because they seem to miss the point. The moral of the experiment for me is that, as far as your consciousness is concerned, nothing exists until the moment you notice it. Observation changes us.

We become what we pay attention to. Observation is an act of creation. If you participate in the experience, your observation creates a new reality. But if you don’t attend these moments, your world is a snow globe – self-contained, sterile, and boring. Without creativity, without participating in reality-building, you aren’t using your natural abilities. Creativity reopens the sealed box of your mind, awakens the child before the poison does its damage.

It feels like observation is simply discovering things that are already there. It seems like our world is a closed loop, a balanced equation. And yet this is an illusion. Observation is like breathing, we do it so naturally that it usually contains no magic. It is so easy to become complacent, to stumble through life like zombies, bumping into obstacles and tripping through traps. But you don’t have to accept that reality, you can forge your own. It starts with observation. The more you look, the more you see. There are an infinity of boxes waiting for you to open and look inside. Hopefully you find more than dead cats waiting for you.

I’ll write again next Sunday. Stay creative.

Your friend, 
Adrian