I just read a book, Six Impossible Things, by John Gribbin. It’s a tiny book which is fitting because it deals with the mystery of tiny things, subatomic particles. They can be in two places at once, and act as either a wave or a particle, and there are formulas to prove both. No one to date has successfully explained why the particles behave as they behave, although several have tried and that's the subject of the book.

Of course, what interests me is that you can’t predict the particle's state until you observe it. For reference on that you can read about Schrödinger's cat, a nice thought experiment in the early days of quantum physics. The lesson for me is simple, if one state is just as likely as another then perhaps it was wrong for me to always prepare for the negative. It would have been best to approach life as a blank slate, governed by the laws of probability, with outcomes unknown until they actually happen.

Let’s consider my upcoming trip to Red River and the Red River Songwriter’s Festival. My first trip was a blank slate, wonderful things happened, and I went home happy, even though I caught Covid. My next trip was filled with expectations. Good things happened again, but it was different from the first trip. I missed last year, and was predisposed not to attend this year. Then I remembered two things.  If my happiness is up to me, and the observer has an effect on the thing being observed, then maybe the trip would be what I made of it rather than a thing that happened to me. I should approach it with anticipation rather than expectations. So, my bags are packed and I’m ready to go, and I’ll let you know what I find in the box when I open it.