Chris Walsh (chris_walsh) wrote,
Chris Walsh
chris_walsh

Schrödinger's Post

Here’s a good deed I did this morning: I delivered someone’s mail.

I had a letter I’d decided to drop off at the post office, and on my way I looked at someone’s lawn and saw an envelope. I picked it up and it was a stamped, addressed envelope: a P.O. Box return address in my neighborhood, a mailing address in Wilsonville, and no postmark. Someone had dropped it: the person sending it or the postal carrier, I know not.

On the off chance (more like off-off-off chance) that the letter had come from the house I was standing in front of, I went up to the porch and knocked on the door. A dog announced by barking that yes, a dog was home, and after about a minute of barking the dog was also announcing No one else is here.

Here’s how my mind works: If someone had been home, and if that someone was somehow indeed the sender of that envelope, I would’ve just handed it to that person and said Have a good day and be gone…because this person wouldn’t have known me from Adam (he wouldn’t know any of the Adams I know, either, but that’s not important right now) and would have no way to know I spoke truth when I’d say Sure! I’ll take it to the post office! So had I actually met the sender, I would’ve felt his likely lack of trust in me and acted on that; by not meeting anybody, I felt more likely to actually deliver it. I was putting myself in some kind of quantum state of delivering the letter/not delivering the letter.

Then I realized I was putting myself in that kind of quantum state, and thought Just get up to the post office and get on with it, and that’s in fact what I did.
Tags: peregrinations
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