My Two-Cents: Schrodinger's Cat and Unemployment

The concept of Schrodinger's Cat is this: Mr. Schrodinger’s pet cat is sitting in a closed box with radioactive material. However, the cat is considered both dead and alive until the box is opened and observed. Basically, unless something is observed, it can’t be known. Is the cat dead? Is it alive? Is it in a beetle-juice-esque-like-purgatory? No one knows. But I feel as if I could look at unemployment from the same angle. 

I remember the last summer before I turned old enough to have a job. I didn’t think much of it at the time because it was all I knew, and as they say – Ignorance is bliss. Those who say to love and have lost is better than to never have loved at all clearly do not remember the pure ignorant enjoyment of being 13 and unemployed. But as the clock struck 14, I had no choice but to open Schrodinger’s box. The state of the cat and my unemployment was no longer unknown, teetering along states of being and non-being. I was woken up by the world and had to get a job. This was the start of the next 60+ years of my life, ones I would have to spend working. 

Though I have come to terms with the fact that I must work to pay bills to be alive, and in some aspects made peace with it, I still can’t help but reminisce on the times when I had no responsibilities. Ignorance really is bliss! There is peace in not knowing if the cat is dead or alive because you haven’t opened the box, at least for a while. Ignorance can’t run on forever, but I see no need to jump the gun. You don't really appreciate something until it's gone; I now realize how nice it was to be unemployed and responsibility-less at the ripe age of 13. The flip side of the coin is I now have a disposable income and a legal ID – so the loss of ignorance did come with some cool new abilities. At some point or another, you have to check to see if the cat is dead or alive -- but I don't see the rush! It's okay to look at something and think, I'm going to Schrodinger's Cat that box for later.