The Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty – I So Don’t Get It (A Re-Post)

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

- old French proverb

Call me staid (read: boring), and old-fashioned (read: inflexible), but change isn’t my cup of tea. Really. I dunno, but I’d rather prefer the sun to rise every morning I get up. Not that it hasn’t risen at all (knock on wood), but I imagine if it doesn’t, then my whole ordered and predictable world will come crashing down. Of course I’m exaggerating, but it brings me my whole point: why change your status quo when there’s no assurance that the precipitating change will be for the better?

All my closest friends know how much I tend to resist change. Give me predictability anytime over spontaneity. I guess this stems from the fact that without some sense of structure in my life, I really tend to be out of focus and go in several directions all at once. Shades of ADHD perhaps? Is it the bohemian attitude supposedly inherent in artistic people? Or is it just a simple an innate lack of self-discipline? Well, for whatever reason, I’ve learned my lessons in the school of hard knocks that’s called life. I need something staid and organized for me to exploit my potentials to the fullest.

Let me digress a little bit. I won’t exaggerate: I’m not exactly obsessive-compulsive, and neither am I an anal-retentive jerk. I don’t have this overwhelming urge to make my bed every morning, nor do I have the patience to arrange my toiletries in some twisted sense of logic. I keep on losing small things ranging from hankies to cell phones to wallets because I’m not compelled to check my pockets every now and then. However, even if my room is a mess, I know underneath that stockpile of music pieces and used clothes is the book I’ve been wanting to read for the past few months. In my closet, I know my passport is on the leftmost shelf, buried under a barrage of knick-knacks and thingamajigs. Among the numerous school and work papers strewn about on my desk, I know that the break up letter I wrote in high school is still in an brown Papelmerotti envelope, unsent after all of these years (we still broke-up though hahahahaha). Somehow, amidst this seemly chaotic behavior, some sense of ordered pattern emerges.

So given my ordered sense of chaos, where does change come in? As the cliché goes, the only sure thing in the world is change. It doesn’t mean that even if my room is a jungle that Tarzan could live in, I don’t know where my things are. Factor-in change a.k.a. the helper cleaning up my room, and zoom, all of a sudden, I have no idea where in the world my notes for the finals of my Music Literature subject are. A trifle example, I know, but nonetheless, it paints a pretty good idea of how much change affects me. It somehow heralds an unknown quantity that utterly mixes up the order in the chaos that I am used to. I know it sounds weird, but inspite of the disorder, I still know that I have some control over it (perhaps making it so not chaotic in its true sense of the word, but that’s another topic altogether).

Besides, change is something that’s not assurable. Let’s go back to my example of the now-cleaned up room. So fine, it’s now nice and clean, but despite its squeakingly spotless exterior, I won’t know where my notes lie (I could ask the maid, but that’s not the point). In other words, why would I even want the uncertainty of change when in fact, the seemingly chaotic state is actually full of order?

My family and friends have this urging for me to take that certain risk called change. They always argue that I’d never know if that change would bear something good. I’d say, no thanks, and please don’t hound and persecute me just because I feel fairly contented with what I have right now. Sure, take potshots at me. Call me boring and predictable. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? Humph. Yeah right. Go tell that to the marines.

P.S. The author’s view early this morning does not necessarily reflect the true philosophical and existential position he takes in life. However, neither can it be claimed as pure fiction. In other words, it is only a facet of his some-time cravings for creative prose; born at 5:00 a.m., straight out of a rambling mind severely demented from lack of sleep.