The Lockdown, The Uncertainty Principle & That Love
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle - This is one mother of a principle. Like seriously.
Detailed quantum physics was not really a part of elementary school education and I switched from medicine to communication studies. I can almost hear the geeks & my parents scoffing and Yes! I’m rolling my eyes at all of you.
But it’s tough to take the geek out of you even if you land up with a bunch of cool kids in Bandra to major in Mass communication where talent like knowing the periodic table by-heart takes a serious back step to knowing the lyrics of The Real Slim Shady to beat.
Coming back to Heisenberg. In physics, this principle basically says that - position & momentum of a particle cannot be measured without affecting each other. I swear to the old gods and the new ones, I am not making this stuff up!
In life it means the closer you examine something, the lesser sense it makes. Oh boy! Now is that not true?
If you have had a life that’s been anything like mine where Murphy has played a stronger role than my mother, you would understand why this principle should be quoted over and over and over again.So Murphy struck again this time in the form of the lockdown. Well mother & Murphy struck together this time,
But in a whole “un-connected” matter, let me breakdown for you what happens to me when I think I fall in love.
Step 1 : The Being Stupid Phase. I start seeing the guy everywhere. I think this is not limited to me. My girlfriends have in their own ways tried to explain to me how it was damn difficult for them to get over some guy because he was there everywhere in their lives “all of a sudden”. I can explain this to all in just one line. Wake the hell up!
Step 2 : The Being Doubly Stupid Phase. After I start seeing him everywhere, he becomes my Albert Einstein & my Tom Hanks. (I’m leaving Ryan Gosling off the list because come on… I’ve not had a crush that bad yet!) He could just as easily be this genuinely dumb guy but somehow for a certain amount of time, he seems to have the answers to all goddamn problems in my life. Ofcourse at that point of time my life’s problems also become things like not being able to open the cap of water bottles and the likes.
Step 3 : The Stupid Excuses Phase. Now once he has started solving all my life’s problems and has become the apple of my eye (you cannot see it but there is a twinkle in my eye for having written down apple of my eye
). I have to have myself around him at all points of time. So I start making up all kinds of reasons - first in my own head and second to all the people around me. I had some real crap excuses sometimes – “I should go for that meeting with him because he won’t know what to do if the excel sheet crashes!” (I just made that up. I’m not that stupid. I’m a bit more stupid than that so I’m not telling you the actual dumb ones I have used. They are seriously embarrassing!)Step 4 : The Extremely Stupid Excuses Phase. Now that I’ve been around him enough, I want to be alone with him. So more ridiculous excuses. “Can I borrow this guy for a moment to tell him how beautiful the world is?” (No I never did that!)
There. Smitten. Or should I say Screwed?
Now if you are here where you want to tell a guy how beautiful the world is… Yeah you have crossed all barriers of being stupid and fallen for this guy. I don’t know if you have fallen in love but lets just leave it at ‘fallen’ for the moment.
If the guy is going through his own process of being stupid and wanting to tell you how beautiful the world is, it’s going to be a lot easier to fall out of it later on (haha). But incase he isn’t finding the world as beautiful as you are, you need to start reversing the above steps to become smart again. And here begins the process of “un-falling”. This is where things get really interesting!
I cannot breakdown the “un-falling” phases for you. They keep changing every time. (If you are trying to guess my number, stop right there. You aren’t going to get it right!) So instead I’ll break down the feelings that I’ve felt in the reversing.
Feeling 1 : Why god Why! (Now you have to read this like how Joe says is in the birthday flash back episodes! If you don’t know Joe, stop reading, go back to your boring life.) The descent begins with incessant questions to god over and over again – “Why did you have to bring this guy in front of me? I was doing just fine before I met him. And if you did bring him in front of me and made me feel this way, why aren’t you making him feel the same way? Am I really that bad where you want me to feel like this? Are you happy now that I’m a mess?” And so it begins with some melodrama with god.
Feeling 2 : I’ll survive. Ok, now the self pity is taken over by a sense of ownership for my own life. I don’t need him to feel like myself again. Let’s blast that music and break the record on every treadmill there is in the gym. (For my friends reading this, no, I was not heart broken every time I was on the treadmill. And stop guessing when I was!)
Feeling 3 : It’s alright. This is actually a beautiful feeling. Now that the longing and the aggression is settling down, the nursing begins. In my head I picture this feeling like a tiny cub (tiger or lion) who is licking their foot that they accidently injured when they were running to chase the wind and a stone came in the way that made them trip. That should say it all about this feeling right? If your imagination is that bad & you cannot picture it… Here!
This image is not mine. The copyright is right there. I am not sure if I am allowed to use it but the cub in the picture is damn cute and very close to the feeling written above so using it anyway. Hope the photographer won't mind! If he does, You'll just have to use your imagination because I'll have to remove it.
Feeling 4 : The analysis. Now that you can start being a friend again to people, you start asking questions again. Oh ya, by the way, through the above 3 feelings, whether you realize it or not, you don’t really behave all that well to the people around you. Now here, in this analysis mode is where things can go really wrong because you know – the periodic existential crises arise here!
So basically what I am trying to arrive at is when you are analyzing life (And don’t tell me you are not in a 21-day lockdown!) you cannot arrive at any precision no matter how much you try. So stop it. As soon as you pin point one reason, the other will become blur and nothing in life is a result of just one thing.
So don’t drive yourself crazy and stop overthinking. I can almost hear half my friends laughing at me while I write this line! Yeah, I am the mayor of overthinking!
If you are speaking to a lizard, it’s alright. So did Rabindranath Tagore and one of his best poems came out of speaking to a lizard. If you are speaking to an egg in your fridge, even that’s alright. I don’t think any great literary work came out of anyone speaking to an egg but hey, you could be that genius. Speak to any weird object you like. It’s not perfectly fine but it’s manageable. But stop overthinking about life, the person you are and the person you love beyond a point. It isn’t healthy. Seriously.
If you ain’t getting sleep, look up Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or quantum physics and sleep will be instant. Promise.
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay sane. And stop wondering who this post is about!
Pic Courtesy : Darshita Pandey
Back Dated: 28th March 2020
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