The Box Isn’t Open Yet

In the famous Schrödinger's cat experiment, he tried to explain the strangeness of quantum mechanics with a parable.

Imagine a cat sealed inside a box. There's a mechanism inside that has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat. According to quantum mechanics, until somebody opens the box and sees what happened, the cat is in a strange state where it is both alive and dead at the same time.

I know. It sounds ridiculous.

Schrödinger himself thought it was ridiculous too. He invented the example to show how strange the quantum world is. At the smallest level of reality, particles don't always seem to exist in one definite state. Instead, they can exist in multiple possible states simultaneously, a concept called superposition.

Recently scientists at Oxford created a new type of Schrödinger's cat state and discovered that these quantum states can be much richer and more complex than originally thought.

But here's the interesting part.

At the quantum level, multiple possibilities exist simultaneously until the system is observed.

This is also true about us in our own lives. Hashem gave us free will. At the most fundamental level, until we’ve done something all the possibilities are there.

The problem is most of us “observe” our situation before it’s come to fruition. We think we’ve already opened the box. We think we know how things will go. We think, “I can’t succeed.” “I’ll fail if I try.” “It will go wrong.” “I won’t be able to handle it.” In our minds, the cat’s already dead before we even act. And that becomes our self-fulfilling prophecy.

But here’s reality: Until it happens, it hasn’t happened. Hashem gave us free will. Right now, multiple futures exist. The next move hasn’t been made yet. The next conversation hasn’t happened. The next opportunity isn’t decided. It’s still waiting on your choice.

So don’t decide your future before it arrives. The box isn’t open yet.