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The Place Where Quantum Leaps Occur (Blog #339)

1 Comment March 4, 2018 CoCo

This afternoon I read about fifty pages in a book called Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli. The book is about quantum physics, and I stopped reading it (for now) when my brain melted and ran out of my ears. Seriously, the book is well-written, but the subject matter (get it–physics–matter?) is dense.

Apparently, part of quantum theory states that electrons orbiting an atom can change orbits, much like if you were orbiting the sun on Earth then suddenly found yourself orbiting the sun on Saturn. But here’s the deal–electrons don’t take a bus, or even a straight or curved line to get from one orbit to another. They’re just in one place and then the next. This phenomenon is what’s properly called a “quantum leap.” (And here I thought “quantum leap” was a television show starring Scott Bakula.)

Holy atomic hopscotch, Batman.

One of the big names in quantum theory is a guy named Werner Heisenberg. He’s dead now but was the one who came up with the idea that in between being at one point and another, an electron is “nowhere.” He formulated this theory one night while in a dark parking lot. There were a few street lamps around, and he saw a man walking across the pavement. He could see the man under one lamp and then the next, but not in between them. Of course, he imagined the man’s trajectory in the dark spaces, but it was as if the man simply disappeared then reappeared elsewhere. So Heisenberg thought, What if subatomic particles behaved like that?

Well, it turns out they do. Crazy, right?

Recently I asked my therapist for her opinion about a psychology book I’d just finished reading. Rather than give me a direct answer, she said, “Let me ask you a question. Do you think I’m more competent than you are–at life?”

“Well,” I kind of sputtered, “No. I don’t actually.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you can see reality.”

My therapist went on to say that in terms of her profession, she obviously has a specific set of skills that I don’t, just like I have a specific set of skills that she doesn’t when it comes to dancing. So in these aspects, perhaps one of us is more competent than the other. Sometimes one person “knows” more than the next. But my therapist’s point was that when it comes to handling life in general, she and I equal. I said, “My only hesitation in answering earlier was that at one time I would have said you were more competent at life than I was.”

Y’all, I can’t say when this change in my thinking took place, I just know that it did. At one time I thought anyone who was smarter, richer, more talented, or better looking than me was better than me overall. But now–I’m glad to say–that thinking seems utterly ridiculous. This shift in perspective is so great, in fact, that I feel like an electron that’s made a quantum leap. It’s as if I’ve suddenly jumped from one orbit, one way of being in the world, to another. Quite literally, I’m on a different path. When I think about Heisenberg’s parking lot/street lamp story, it really does feel as if I used to be “there,” then I was “nowhere,” and now I’m “here.”

(I don’t know what my deal with quotation marks is tonight.)

Granted, I realize this isn’t how the changes in our lives and thought processes actually occur. Presto, change-o. Despite the fact that I can remember one point of light in my life and compare it to another, current point of light in my life and feel as if I’ve made a quantum leap, I can also remember walking through the dark in order to get from where I was to where I am now. But I can’t say when the shift actually happened. I’m glad I did, but I can’t say when exactly I stepped into this current point of light.

This is the beauty of walking through the dark.

If you want my honest opinion, some days I think I’m still walking through the dark. I mean, life has been a real bitch lately. As an episode of Breaking Bad points out, sometimes you’re looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, and all you get is more tunnel. Maybe it’s possible to be in the light and in the dark at the same time. Going back to quantum theory, there’s something called indeterminancy. Inderterminancy states that when, say, an electron does move from one point to another, it doesn’t follow a predictable path. In fact, it behaves as if it were following all possible paths. (Wrap your head around that.) But the point is that when an electron is in between points, when it’s “nowhere,” you don’t “know where” it’s going to end up next. So perhaps this is the beauty of walking through the dark, of those times in our lives when it feels as if we too are nowhere. Nowhere, it turns out, isn’t a bad place to be. Rather, it’s the place where quantum leaps occur, the place where changes can happen in an instant, the place where all possible outcomes are exactly that–possible.