Inside The Box, The Identity Paradox.

Until you are seen, you are many things at once, potential, paradox, and possibility.

The Schrondinger paradox applied to identity. You are everywhere and nowhere until someone opens the box and looks at you. But that’s dangerous, because we´re definitely don’t exist only when someone validates us. We’re already here, full of layers, even in the darkness of the box.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Erwin Schrödinger’s experiment goes like this: close your eyes and imagine a sealed box. Inside it, there is a cat, a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison. How does it work?

1. The atom may or may not decay.

2. If it decays, the counter detects it.

3. The detector breaks the vial.

4. The poison is released.

5. The cat dies.

If the atom does not decay, nothing happens, and the cat remains alive.

The question is: before opening the box, the atom exists simultaneously in a state of “decayed” and “not decayed.” If the atom is in both states at once, then the entire system is as well. In other words, the cat would be both alive and dead at the same time, until someone opens the box and observes.

This experiment does not mean that human consciousness magically creates reality. Rather, it suggests that physical interaction — measurement — forces the system to assume a definite state.

At first glance, my metaphor seems to suggest that our identity exists in a kind of superposition, multiple states at once. Before someone looks at us, we are plural. There is potential. Possibility. But once we are observed, we collapse into a specific version of ourselves , the one that was seen, interpreted, named.

We become defined by the external gaze. Depending on who is looking, we become a different version of ourselves. The other’s gaze can, in some way, shape who we are.

But, as I said before, that’s a dangerous claim. Why? Because if identity depends on external validation, then who are we when no one is looking? We become eternal hostages to other people’s perception. Our existence begins to depend on being seen. Where is our own agency in that?

I’m not saying vulnerability isn’t important. I think, to some extent, we are all searching for a way to be loved just a little more each day. I simply reject the idea of losing control and becoming entirely dependent on someone else — and on the feelings a specific person awakens in me.

I exist before I am perceived. I am not born when you validate me. That’s what I mean.

My identity exists prior to recognition. Even in the darkness of the box, even without applause, acknowledgment, love, or approval, I am complex, deep, and layered.

I want to be seen someday. But not to be validated.
To be accepted.