Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
Who is worthy of inhabiting the unremarkable hours of our lives?
Accidents rarely happen when we expect them to. Love never arrives the way we rehearse it in our heads. It slips in quietly, without asking to be seen.
Then, like a photo coming into focus, we realize it was staring at us the entire time.
“How was the MRI?” I asked.
The radiologist demurred.
Her hesitation was answer enough. But I wanted to stay optimistic. After all, it was just a bike crash. Just a cracked helmet. Just a concussion. Just persistent headaches. The MRI was supposed to be just in case. Plus, I was secretly hoping to be done in time to stop by my favorite cafe before a 11am customer call I’d scheduled the same day.
But then—
After the RA walked me straight to the ER; after the on-call neurosurgeon weighed in; after a second scan to confirm the size of bleed; after the paramedics strapped me to a stretcher; after the ambulance transferred me to a specialty clinic; after the nurses prepped me in the ICU; after the PA explained the scans.
—I understood.
Earlier that day while waiting in the emergency room, I texted S. and made a list of things I thought I’d need: close the blinds, shut off the heat, water the plants, bring the book on my nightstand, a charger, and something that reminded me of home.
I imagined I was simply preparing for a short trip.
Laying on the surgical table inside the operating room like a frog awaiting dissection, the last thing I remember were the high-contrast white walls closing in around me, a spotlight on a stage I never auditioned for, and the hope I’d make it home soon.
In the days that followed inside the step-down unit, a new clarity settled in. Light filtered through the blinds, as machines measured and monitored and beeped. Doctors, nurses, pulmonologists, nutritionists, occupational and physical therapists, and cleaning crew took turns descending upon my hospital bed at all hours of the day. Friends showed up quietly. Family stayed. Meals arrived at reception. Words flowed over the phone. Flowers poured into the room. Cards through in the post.
They were the ones who didn’t wait to be asked.
Some friends didn’t call, didn’t bother—a clarity in itself, a gift of its own kind.
Then there’s the clarity that comes from being cared for by those you love who love you back. In the weeks after surgery, being with S. helped me realize what I want most in a partner. Once, after I’d fallen asleep to the cocktail of post-surgical painkillers and IV drip, he sat bedside and continued holding my hand for an hour.
In the unseen acts, we learn everything we need to know about a person: whether they’re kind, attentive, thoughtful, caring; whether they have the capacity to show up not just on the wedding day, the big milestones, the anniversaries, the highlight reels, but in the mundane and thankless hours of everyday life.
It’s been said that theatre is who we are when everyone is looking.
Character is who we are when no one is.
I used to be enamored by the people who commanded attention the moment they entered a room. They charmed clients and won over Boards; they moved through the world with dazzling confidence. They sucked the air out of a room when they spoke: magnetic, all-consuming, no room for uncertainty, doubt, or nuance. They were the Forbes 30 Under 30, the captains of industry and titans of Wall Street. When I was young and unsure of how I wanted to contribute to the world, I was captivated by their shine, mistaking polish for substance. I wanted to be one of them, too.
I now admire the opposite: the people who need no spotlight, no fanfare, no applause, no shiny shoes or tailored suits. They show up quietly, consistently, day in day out, for the people they love and the work they believe in.
They are the everyday heroes we fail to see because they’re hiding in plain sight: the highway construction crew paving our roads at 2am; the nurse who kisses her 5-year-old son goodnight before driving to work the night shift; the coworker who calls your bluff on the days you say you’re great, thanks! when you’re not. These people don’t seek glory, titles, or recognition; they seek to build something far more enduring.
The perfect partner inhabits the unremarkable hours of our lives.
The German Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg observed that we cannot know both the speed and position of a particle with perfect accuracy. The more we nail down the particle's position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa:
In other words, if we could shrink a tortoise down to the size of an electron, we would only be able to precisely calculate its speed or its location, not both at the same time.
A similar uncertainty principle also applies to problems in pure math and classical physics—basically, any object with wave-like properties. Quantum objects are special because they all exhibit wave-like properties by the very nature of quantum theory.
Love, I suppose, works the same way: we don’t know how much love and support we have until we find ourselves riding downhill faster than we’ve imagined, faster than we’d planned, on a Sunday morning in September. Until gravity flips us forward and sends us spinning off our bikes at 40+ miles per hour. Until EMTs arrive and we’re watching yellow dotted lines pass us by from the back of an ambulance truck.
Until we’re forced to come to a stop. Until we need it.
And when I needed it, it was there.
To me, the idea of a perfect partner is someone who inhabits the unremarkable hours of our lives. They share not only the peaks of applause, but also the monotony of days that demand endurance and grace. In this rhythm, they bear witness to the people we are when we’re at our weakest and most vulnerable. Their commitment reminds us of who we are and help us imagine who we have still yet to become.
Here, love begins to take shape: the shared cup of coffee on a gray afternoon; the knowing exchange of glances in a crowded room; the reaching of hands that meet in the middle; the last person to leave, long after the curtains are drawn and the crowds disperse. Their presence is not a flash of brilliance but a constant, enduring flame.
These moments are where life happens; where love reveals itself; where, if we’re lucky, we come to understand that the mundane was never really mundane at all.