the quantum mechanics of free-range chickens

A few burning questions come to mind immediately.

What would my life be like if I hadn’t gotten hospitalized when I was younger?

Aside from a speech impediment in early childhood, I had a fairly normal life until a week from my eighth birthday. At my annual physical check-up, the nurse found something funny about my blood pressure. She called a doctor over, and they asked me to lie down on the exam table. I blinked and woke up hours later in the PICU, struggling to breathe normally with a breathing tube hooked up to my nose — quite ironic. I blinked again, and not only did I wake up to find more tubes connected to me, I also found myself in a new hospital and a new year of age.

I was only in there for three weeks, but my life was turned upside-down. I saw some crazy stuff in that short period of my life. About two decades later, I’m still discovering more and more lifestyle habits that were born from that hospitalization. It seems like so much of my outlook on life and death was shaped by that experience, so without that formative experience, how would I be living my life?

What will professional success look like for me?

I have professional aspirations, but I’m nowhere near the point of being able to understand what I define as success. It hasn’t been long since I’ve gotten my bachelor’s degree. I feel more like a baby wearing business attire than a self-sufficient adult. I’ve barely figured out how to sort out my taxes, much less sort out my career goals.

I also doubt I’ll be a happier person if the crystal ball tells me how my success story will play out. If I like the future I see, I’ll feel obligated to follow the crystal ball’s script to a tee in order to ensure I reach that happy ending. If I don’t like what my future holds, I’ll let out a displeased harrumph and set out to defy the ball’s guidance at every crossroad in my life.

And who even knows if I’ll be able to make sense of my future success? I once met a senior State Department official who had a bachelor’s degree in, of all things, trumpet. It’s like an architect major peering into the crystal ball and finding out they’re going to make a killing being part of a Mongolian metal band. I wouldn’t be mad. I would certainly toast to my future self, but I’d do so with pleasant confusion.

I’m sure that, below my surface level thoughts, there are a dozen more reasons why this question would have a net counterproductive effect on my professional motivations. Nevertheless, we humans are curious by nature. We just can’t help but crave the certainty in knowing, even if we’re better off knowing later — or not at all. Inside of each of us is a kid in a Stanford psychology experiment who wants to eat their marshmallow now, delayed gratification be damned.

I'm digressing. The real question I have is–

what would my life be like if i didn’t go to dc for college?

Growing up, I was a chicken. “Clingy” is an understatement; I think I had separation anxiety. I didn’t like going to a different school than my older sister Rachel, and I hated the helpless feeling of watching a different yellow school bus take her away from me. I was the kind of kid who barnacle-grappled my mom’s arm wherever we went in public, and I’d do so even at the not-so-cute age of twelve. At family dinners, I would follow my sister and my cousins everywhere: to the living room, to the dining room, to the porch, to the bathroom (door). I could never do sleepovers or overnight summer camps because I would get unbearably homesick; on more than one occasion, I had made my dad drive late at night to pick up my crybaby ass and bring me home early.

I eventually got over my clinginess, enough to confidently attend sleepovers and overnight summer camps. I gained a little more confidence in my interpersonal skills and dared to hang out more with friends after school. Still, I wasn’t sure if I could stomach fully moving out for college. All of my older cousins had gotten a bachelor’s, and it was a given that Rachel and I should keep with the trend. Living in the scholarly state of Massachusetts meant that I had many local options, but pretty much all of them required students to live on campus for freshman year, if not longer. For li’l chicken me, enduring a whole academic year away from home — even if home was only a half-hour drive away — seemed like an impossible shot.

In high school, life took a strange turn. Rachel went off to college, and my parents were struck with (partially) empty nest syndrome. I think they were anxious that they hadn’t properly prepared her for adulthood, but they didn’t know how to express their worries in any way besides being overbearing and demanding. Rachel pushed back at first, understandably irritated by their request to know so many details about her private life, which caused them to push further and make more demands of her, creating an unfortunate feedback loop of deteriorating trust and empathy.

It was a heartbreaking thing to realize that parents could both love yet distrust their own child. I was never the subject of their hyper-scrutiny, but I was still anxious by the juxtaposition between me being allowed to spread my wings at the same time Rachel’s was being smothered. I was happy to experience the beautiful sunshine and green grass outside the coop, yet I could never truly be at peace. It was like I was always within earshot of a farmer haranguing another chicken into returning to the coop against their will. The more degrees of independence that were granted to me, the more anxious I was at being stripped of those privileges the same way Rachel was at risk of losing them.

Rachel taught me that simply moving out for college wasn’t going to be enough. It’s hard to draw boundaries with parents when they genuinely believe that, with enough love put into it, any action they take can never do any wrong. It’s harder when, despite everything, you still love those parents and want to forgive them even when their wants start to come at the cost of yours. It’s nigh impossible when there’s only one highway and a twenty minute drive separating you from that exhausting love.

I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to fight them if I ever ended up in the same situation as Rachel. I needed to put physical distance between my past and my future, but it had to be greater than a separation of several ZIP code digits. I needed to go far away enough that I could carve out a personal corner of the world for myself, one that wasn’t at risk of being co-opted into my parents’ sphere of influence.

I needed to be able to roam the fields outside and return to roost whenever I so pleased. I couldn’t compromise on allowing a farmer or mother hen to linger nearby, not even if they had benign intentions. To be a true free-range chicken, I needed the guarantee that I alone had ownership over my space and movement.

It took some encouragement from some teachers and one school guidance counselor, but I committed myself to leaving Massachusetts for college. I applied to a few local safety schools despite knowing they were already off my shortlist (mainly to assuage my parents — call me deceptive if you want). I mostly applied to out-of-state schools. I didn’t stop at the national border; I even applied to St. Andrews on the other side of the pond.

Despite my parents’ attempts to dissuade me, I ultimately chose to go to a university in DC. Not only was it perfect for international relations studies, but it was also a whole four hundred and fifty miles away. Eight hours away by car, seven if you were willing to start the journey before four in the morning and skip meals. It was a doable trip, though one that would stretch the wallet for gas money and hotel prices — a conundrum for Chinese parents whose love for family was nearly matched by their frugality.

I metaphorically flew the coop. I didn’t only leave behind my parents, but I also left behind Rachel, my friends, and the comfort of knowing my hometown inside and out from eighteen years of constant residency. I was nervous about the move — what if I never found friends I loved as much as the ones back home? — but in the end, I took a leap of faith and believed in my capacity to build a second home for myself in DC.

nevertheless, i’ve thought about a universe where i stayed.

Free-range chickenhood is nice, but it’s not like the coop was a spartan prison. Despite my words above, I still loved my parents and would’ve taken their close proximity to be a net reassurance. Staying local meant I had a standing offer to come home for free food, and you know my dad makes a mean fried rice. Once I finished the mandatory semesters of on-campus dorm life, I also had the option to save on housing and apartment rent by commuting from home.

The biggest plus would’ve been the people. I’ve lived in the same town for all thirteen years of public school, and part of me just kind of assumed I’d continue living and learning alongside my classmates for the rest of my life. A lot of my closest high school friends chose to stay in Massachusetts, so I wonder how many opportunities I’d lost to casually hit them up and ask to hang out over a free weekend in college. I also had only just started to become closer with my cousins, and every time I’d see them plan hangouts with Rachel in the group chat, I would resign myself to texting “Have fun!” and then quietly mope.

But I’ve come to accept that, had I stayed, I might’ve ended up relying on my high school connections as a social crutch. Without the impetus of moving away from Massachusetts, I wouldn’t have been as eager to ride the freshman friend-making fever. I wouldn’t have been motivated to try out as many clubs as I could fit in my schedule, and I would’ve never imagined joining the Model UN team or rushing for a professional fraternity, two communities that ended up gifting me my best friends in college.

Because I plopped down in an entirely new environment for college, I’ve learned how to be a more outgoing human being. I’m still an introvert at my core, but I’ve begun to enjoy socializing with strangers, something that would’ve horrified my anxious middle school ass. The coronavirus lock-down may have fucked with my college life aspirations (understatement of the goddamn century), but there was an unexpected silver lining to living like a cave goblin for two years. My discontent with lock-down life and remote learning was just proof that I’ve come so far from being a grouchy teenager, that I’m now able to appreciate social interaction as a healthy and healing activity, that I’ve become a much more agreeable human being than before.

I’m now living a much happier and more satisfying life than I ever could’ve imagined for myself as a high schooler. I’ll never know if my college decision was the most decisive factor in shaping my current happiness. All I know for a fact is that it’s one of many past choices that pave the road towards where I stand today.

have you heard of the many-worlds interpretation?

The idea originates from the bonkers discipline of quantum mechanics, a field that I won’t even pretend to understand, so I’ll present it in the way that popular culture tends to romanticize it. Many-worlds proposes that there’s an infinite number of alternate universes. Each universe represents a single possibility from a choice that has multiple possibilities. For example, if you have the choice between walking to the store or driving to the store, your decision will fork reality into two branches of alternate universes, one where you walked and one where you drove. At every metaphorical crossroads in your life, you create a universal crossroads with ever more branching alternate universes.

Each one of these infinite alternate universes are as “real” as the reality that you and I currently exist in. However, we’re only aware of one such universe. We are but simple human beings. We don’t have the capacity to observe other timelines or dimensions, and that’s definitely for the better. You get this one life, this one reality, this one chance, so you’d better make the most of it.

In less eloquent terms, the mortifying ordeal of being known can’t hold a candle to the resigned acceptance of YOLO. I don’t remember exactly when, but once I understood that logic, my life changed for the better. I’ve now gotten very good at quieting the what if’s in my head in order to fully grasp the right now’s. There’s no stopping my brain’s propensity to overthink the stupidest things, but I’ve at least redirected that energy away from time-consuming hypotheticals toward present matters that will actually have a tangible impact on my life.

A know-it-all crystal ball would fuck with my vibes, even moreso than the pandemic had. The mere existence of that ball presents the opportunity to free oneself from the mortal confines of existence, opening a messy can of worms and hypotheticals and hypothetical worms. Even with our lame inability to see alternate universes, we humans already tend to be caterwauling messes of regrets. Imagine your inner demons getting a buff from crystal confirmation that, indeed, you aren’t marrying the person who could’ve made you the happiest, that you didn’t choose the career that could’ve made you the most successful, that you shouldn’t have said that awful intrusive thought which ruptured a friendship dear to your heart, and so on.

Comparison is the thief of joy. In the many-worlds interpretation, it’s all too easy to draw comparisons between you and the you that could’ve been. The question is also structured such that you only get the guarantee of knowing the truth, not that you’ll also have the power to do anything you want about that truth. If you chose to ask a question about another version of reality, you’ll then have to deal with that burden of knowledge without the capacity to jump ship and swap into an alternate time stream where things would’ve gone “better.”

This is all to say that I’d be too much of a coward to ask my question to the crystal ball. I’d prefer not to know the absolute truth. I don’t like the thought that all of my past efforts can be invalidated by knowing how many opportunities I’d passed up to be “more optimal.” Best case scenario: I’d made all the right moves, and now I’ve wasted my limited edition “Get One Truth Free!” deal. Worst case scenario: I’d absolutely fucked shit up, and now I can’t do anything about it. How the heck is that supposed to be helpful?

Imagine the free-range chicken, once more. (I promise this is the last instance of this contrived metaphor.) The chicken lives in a luxurious free-range enclosure. It loves to preen in the warm sunshine. It gets to peck up beakfuls of chicken feed at its own leisure. Save for the routine egg collection, it gets to follow its own schedule. Life is good.

But it’s also a curious little thing, so it wanders to the far end of the fenced enclosure. The free-range chicken is surprised because it sees a vibrant meadow of fresh bugs on the other side of the fence, grub that’s far more appetizing than farm feed. Maybe it even sees a wild chicken on the other side, and that chicken starts gobbling down on those yummy worms and crickets, and now the free-range chicken is jealous. And oh! Now the wild chicken is rummaging through the grass and pecking at crispy seeds all around the meadow. The free-range chicken wants to join in on the fun, but it can’t hop the fence because its wings don’t allow it to fly high enough.

How I wish that was me, it thinks. But that’s all it can do. It can only think of how nice it must be to live on the other side. It can only think about how “free-range” is nothing when compared to “free.”