January 18, 2022

“I pray you, sweetheart, counsel me whether it is better for a man to speak or die? I shall always counsel my friends to speak and not to die. There are few words that cannot be mended, but life once lost can never be regained.”

At fifteen, I first heard this quote amidst a run-down theater in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana. Since freshman year of high school, I have entirely imagined this moment in varying splashes of color. In actuality, the images of summer somewhere in northern Italy flickered on screen as Timothee Chalamet laid in the arms of his mother, as she whispered these words from the German folk story, Heptameron. Fans of the famed film Call Me by Your Name, remember that this quote served as the backbone for Elio and Oliver’s romance. However, it also reminds us how we should live our lives. 

Such a quote tells us to speak, always. Because, why should we risk death over uncertainty? 

Now, I choose to interpret the death mentioned in the quote not as death in a literal sense, but as the absence of opportunity, or what could have been. 

As a result, I have conducted a great deal of thinking because I have decided not to speak before. We all have. Every time I did not respond to that text, did not say hi to someone in the dining hall, or I did not invite them into the conversation, I feel a pang of regret as I replay these moments over and over. Yet, I do not, and will never, know what would have happened if I had  spoken.

Last night, I sat in the bath watching Silicon Valley on HBO. And, just like that, the cast stumbled upon a similar death / uncertainty dilemma, which involved the situation of Schrodinger’s Cat. This is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics—I basically failed physics so please do not ask me to explain it to you—that illustrates the paradox that a physical system can exist in two separate states at the same time. Schrodinger’s cat is a hypothetical cat (locked in a steel box) that can be considered to be both simultaneously both alive and dead because its very fate links, and is contingent upon, a random event that could or could not occur for it to escape. 

In short, to me, the example of Schrodinger’s Cat is the basic underlying principle of life and the quote. Life is completely random. Of course, our actions have consequences, and every action has its equal opposite reaction. Even as the quote suggests, it may be better to speak because “there are few words that cannot be mended, but life once lost can never be regained.” 

Though, when I begin to agree with this idea to be more unapologetically assertive, I ask: what if we regret the answer to the question we uttered? What if, when we check the state of Schrodinger’s cat, he is dead? Did we kill the cat? How are we supposed to live with the information we received? Yet, this information and response are both parts of the very meticulous ways of life. 

Over the past eighteen years and countless conversations with my dad, we have settled on this line of thought: some things are meant to be and some things are not. Life is random; we cannot be the ones to predict whether or not speaking will be better or whether the cat locked in a steel box is alive or dead. We will always exist in a limbo of risk and ignorance. Although it may sound unsettling, we learn to deal with it. We grab onto the things that we know and take heed of what we do not. We cannot assign a reason to everything and that is okay because we will learn to live with it. Good things do not linearly happen to good people and bad things do not always happen to bad people. Living is a cycle of regret, risks, happiness, anxiety, and more. 

Once we accept that living is a cycle, we will not have to cling onto the phrase “it was meant to be.” Did we have to speak? Frequently, we find out bad things and feel like shit. Despite such negative effects, we have to know those things in order to live. 

Thus, here is what I have learned and seek to impart upon you: if you feel like you should speak, do it. Just know that speaking does not guarantee a positive result or the absence of regret. Though, I think that each time you take that risk, you become more and more okay with the uncertainty with the answer, and, therefore, life itself.