I have an appointment today that will determine whether or not there is something wrong with my health. And I will not lie, it has been weighing on me. Not in the morbid reflection kind of way but in the “I wonder what will happen next kind of way”.
It occurs to me that I have a Schrödinger’s cat scenario...again. Right now the possibilities are equal - for me to have the health issue and for me not to have the health issue. Until I get today’s test results, both are equally possible.
I am in the box, and my chances of viability are equal at this point...I could be healthy and I could be ill. Just like the cat, until some future event happens, we will not know for sure.
But my mind is like what I imagine the cat in the box to be...active, thinking, calculating and conspiring. Before its alleged demise, I imagine that cat is in that fucking box, working away at solving the equation that landed it there to begin with. I am no different. My mind and the cat’s mind have been active in the problem solving department, solving problems that I do not yet have. But I might...
I think it is a normal thing, to attempt to solve things that do not yet exist, or at least exist outside our knowledge and experience. This process somehow calms the mind. Helps it to feel secure, even when there really is no security in this life. Everything you have can be taken from you at any time without your knowledge, permission or consent. Safety is really an illusion we create to help ourselves not go completely fucking mad.
So in this case, my calculations have been all about probabilities, chances, the manipulation of facts and outcomes. My mind has been active in thinking through the possibilities as if somehow thinking them through can change the trajectory. It can’t. I know this and yet, here I am.
There is a part of me that thinks it will all be just fine and then there is this other part of me that isn’t quite so sure. I guess it really all depends on my definition of fine...
So this morning I wake, in my Schrödinger box, chicken scratch all over the proverbial walls. Attempting to calm myself with sciencey things that are no more than information and lines of reasoning manufactured by my head. Truth be known, I am like the cat, sitting in the box awaiting whatever fate has in store for me. There is nothing else to do really. Nothing.
Pray. But I am not even sure what to pray for...to pray for a favorable result feels wrong. I mean why should I get a pass when so many others do not? To not pray for a result doesn’t feel right either. I mean if I am not going to pray for my own wellbeing, then why should anyone else?
I guess this is the gap that exists between science and the Divine. Each influence the other but in the end, Divinity wins every time. You can have all the science backing you in this world, but if it is your turn in the proverbial spiritual test or barrel, there isn’t anything you can really do but pray.
So I will pray. For strength, for safety, for the ability to see my circumstances for what they are...human. I will review all my calculations that are scrawled all over my boxed in walls and see them for what they are, fear manifested in some sort of misguided effort to think that one can think oneself out of a cancer scare, or a box for that matter. You can’t, by the way. It is ever present and there. It doesn’t go away until you hear those magical sciencey words...benign.
Until that happens, in the box I shall remain. Waiting until someone lifts off the lid to allow me to see whether I am alive or dead. Knowing that the metaphysics of that question shall live in perpetuity which is why Schrödinger was such a brilliant man. He captured our duality in this life...that things are often one thing or the other and only the passage of time, and perhaps a few medical tests can ever assure us otherwise.
Today my chances are equal and unknown. And since sciencey answers evade me, I shall pray for the strength to grant me safe passage to whatever the result...and that when my box lid is removed, and the inquest finally made, we find that me and my cat are just fine in our box. Nothing to worry about at all.
Again.
Still.
