The Cat, the River, and the Problem of Certainty
Trauma teaches the nervous system to treat probability as certainty. But the box is not yet open, and you cannot step into the same river twice. Trust the pattern — without worshipping it as fate.
Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment from quantum physics. The simple version is this: a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, a mechanism releases poison and the cat dies. If the atom does not decay, the cat lives.
Before opening the box, we may know the odds. We might know there is a high chance the cat is dead, or a high chance it is alive. But we do not know the actual result until we observe it.
That connects to an old philosophical distinction: a priori and a posteriori.
A priori means what we think we know before checking. For example: “This person has hurt me many times before, so they will probably hurt me again.”
A posteriori means what we know after checking. For example: “This time, they were kind” or “This time, they were not.”
This matters emotionally because trauma often teaches the nervous system to treat probability as certainty. If someone has been unkind 900 times out of 1000, it makes complete sense to protect yourself. Patterns matter. Past behaviour matters. Boundaries matter.
But “very likely” is not the same as “certain forever”.
Black-and-white thinking can feel safe because it removes uncertainty. It says, “The cat is always dead.” But life is not fixed like that. People change. Situations change. We change.
Heraclitus said you cannot step into the same river twice, because the river is always moving. In a deeper sense, you cannot even step into the same river once, because everything is already changing as it happens.
So the wiser position might be:
“I trust the pattern, but I do not worship it as fate.”
That lets us protect ourselves without making the future completely dead before it has even arrived.