The Missing Super Bitch Sock, The Uncertainty Principle and My Bifurcation Point

Today I was confronted with a dilemma which has been plaguing mankind since the village hosier in Chaucer’s day weaved a fine hose – where do all the missing socks go?   Why is it that no matter how many socks you have, how careful you are to transfer them directly to the laundry basket when you take them off, directly to the washing machine and then to the tumble drier (immediately next to it) and then directly to the drawer once they are clean, you eventually end up with fewer socks than when you started? Why is there always one single sock that's a completely different colour or pattern or shape than all of the others?

I’m frequently confounded by this – how is it that half of the matched socks disappear but they seem to be replaced with socks which I have never seen before.  What happened to my cute Eyore socks and my other Super Bitch sock (a tongue-in-cheek gift from my sister on my 35^th birthday)?  Why is it that I have 3 different socks?  As I stood there confounded at the tumble drier – I figured the only possible explanation is evolution. 

As I stood there staring at three different socks, I became convinced that socks are shapeshifters – they change their appearances to fit a new situation – like the way an old sweater will assume the shape of the person who wears it.  Perhaps they figure if they stay the same, we will keep wearing them, wear holes into them only to be discarded.  So they change, they develop new shapes and patterns but only in water followed by heat.  The other alternative of course is that my tumble drier is a portkey and my missing socks are out there somewhere in a parallel universe where some other woman is shaking her head looking at three odd socks wondering where on earth the Super Bitch sock came from.

Isn’t life like this too?  Just when you think you have all your ducks in a row (or all your socks) you discover that things are not what they seem. I blame scientific reductionism – we have all been brainwashed by Isaac Newton.  We were raised to believe that the only way to understand something is to break it down into its constituent parts and functions.  Newton declared this when he stated that all moving objects moved in mechanistic ways governed by certain laws and principles.  His brilliant explanation of gravity persuaded us all to think that everything in life is determined by the laws of cause and effect and that everything in life can be understood by scientific reductionism.  While the apple may have fallen on his head, I cannot explain the three mismatched socks and I certainly cannot explain some of the circumstances I find myself in by cause and effect.  It also does not explain why people leave you when you give them your heart and soul and vulnerability.  In fact, there is nothing more you can give to someone than your complete and utter vulnerability.

This brings me to the Uncertainty Principle.   I am beginning to think that some of the basic tenets of quantum physics are far more relevant to our everyday lives than we even begin to realise. I find it amusing that while scientists previously considered matter to be solid – physicists have since discovered that there are in fact no solid particles underlying the structure of any objects which we perceive as solid.  What we perceive as solid matter is in fact an assemblage of countless miniscule energy potentials vibrating in relation to each other at incredible speeds.  Isn’t that true about so many things in life too?  What appears to be is often far from reality.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle asserts that a detached objective observation or measurement from outside a subatomic system is not possible.  The act of observing affects what is observed.  In other words, the observer influences the system which is being studied.  The principle asserts that  it is impossible to know everything there is to know about a particle with absolute certainly.  When you know about one aspect of a particle, you lose information about other aspects of it.  Isn’t that true about people too?  For example, when you think you are sure someone loves you, you don’t know why; and when you have figured out why they love you, you don’t know if they do.

I know that the quantum world is abstract and mathematical and in some ways a “shadow” world because we can never know it directly by observing it.  When we attempt to measure a quantum system or entity, the very act of measuring it, changes the system.  If someone says “I love you” and you ask them how much, do they love you less?

I have written before that everything in life seems to be connected somehow – there seems to be an intricate web of invisible strands that holds our existence together.  Isn’t if funny that a quantum entity is said to be in every possible state at the same time – called a “superposition” – and upon measurement, it chooses one state – the state that best conforms to the experimental conditions or context at the time.  In other words, if you are looking for signs of cancer you will find them.  If you are looking for the negative in people, you will bring out the negative in them.  Perhaps my socks knew I thought they would be missing and then shape-shifted.  The same is true for relationships – perhaps if I was listening and waiting for the other shoe to drop, trust me I am still reeling from the thud.  Perhaps I should take a lesson from my Super Bitch sock...

I’m fascinated by this “knowledge” that emerges and change the trajectory of life completely.  The chromosomes in a fertilized egg do not carry a final and complete blueprint for the body that will develop.  They are just a starting point – potential.  As the cells multiply and differentiate, the new cells seem to “know” what functions have to be assumed and they go on to become different types of tissue. 


I’m wondering why we don’t have the same superposition in our psyche – why is it that when adversity strikes we don’t always choose the best behaviours when it comes to our thoughts and responses? Where does the synapse misfire?  Perhaps it is because we become the observer in our own tragedy and it changes us and the situation.  I am wondering if it is not a case of grasping that the experience itself is not who I am but what makes me, in the same way that it is not the crucifixion that counts but the resurrection.


I have fielded another nasty curveball from the outfield this week – albeit on the nose – but I am beginning to accept that change is constant – the only stable reference point in life. Newton also got a ball on the nose – from Prigogine – who coined the term “bifurcation point”.  


He found that certain phenomena in chemistry did not fit with Newton’s universal and reductionistic laws.  Specifically, he stated that if the energy input increases beyond what a closed simple system can withstand or absorb, the system’s structure becomes disorganized and fluctuates in chaotic ways. The system will either collapse completely or reorganise into a new structure.


As I write this, I wonder if he was not looking at my life….  When external demands exceed the capacity of your coping mechanisms – you are driven to “bifurcation point” – a moment in your life when you will never be the same again.  It is here that meltdown occurs – and while today was a total waste of make-up – it may not be a bad thing.  


When you reach bifurcation point, if you can avoid being crushed beyond recovery and do your best to bounce back, you will emerge a stronger and more resilient person.  I reached my bifurcation point this week with the discovery of a large lump on my neck (perhaps that is where the socks went). As clichéd as it sounds, perhaps chaotic disequilibrium keeps us protean – we keep evolving like the crazy socks that keep morphing into unknown mysterious socks I have not encountered in my laundry basket before (and avoid getting thrown away - clever socks!).


Perhaps that is what this chaotic disequilibrium is all about – reinvention and post traumatic growth.  Perhaps I have been too Newtonian in my approach to life – examining it by reducing it to the nuts and bolts and in doing so, I didn’t see that what I thought was solid was in fact nothing but a void of potential.  Living life in quantum terms may be the healthier but painful alternative.  Perhaps embracing the bifurcation point and  the falling apart of all I know and hold dear is necessary for the evolution of the new person – perhaps my Eyore must morph into Super Bitch.  Perhaps this total disequilibrium is required to reset me to my default superposition.  I’m not really sure.  For now, Im still reeling from the impact, searching for my favourite socks, and yearning for the one who has always been able to silence the churning storms around me with a silent hug.


While I am gripped by cold fear and fervently praying that the cells in the lump will choose to be benign, hoping that the Uncertainty Principle can work positively by actualizing what it is I hope for and wish for so fervently, I must let it be.  Hopefully it will manifest what I am looking for and not what I fear.  In the meantime, perhaps this lump is like the lightning that struck a tree in my forest – it may destroy the tree as it is.  But a fallen tree becomes an ecosystem for a whole new range of organisms on the forest floor.  It will become a substrate for a host of organisms and will give life.  Perhaps I have to lose it all to gain it again. Perhaps that is the Uncertainty principle at work – when you think you have lost it, is when you will find it; and when you think you have it, is when you lose it.