Note: This is a bit out there for me but I’ve been wanting to prove to myself that Dubai, as non-analogue-y as it is, can be written about. And so I am writing about it.
I left the chilled trendy interiors of the newest neighbourhood bar to meet a gust of hot and inexplicably humid desert wind, as one often does in Dubai. A less than 500-meter walk had me questioning whether I should take a taxi, if only to avoid the inevitable drip of sweat rolling down on my back. It was Tuesday night, I had not yet scaled the summit of the ongoing work week, and here I was already drunk in that restless unsatisfied way of two watered-down happy hour drinks. So far little had surprised me in Dubai, with its cheque-red money-ed past and present. Yet, I often found myself marveling at how many people braved the 40 degrees weather by existing outdoors, come morning, day, or night. At 10 pm, the usual crowds of people returning homes from office, dinner, and workouts had not yet lulled, and bright white lights exasperated my vision. In all that hustle, there lay a cat, an ordinary sized, common, brownish black cat. It was sprawled across a bench, head nestled between outstretched paws, one eye completely swallowed within a big black splotch. That cat understood me- and I understood it, this is what the heat made me feel like—slowing down, giving up.
I stood awhile, watching this cat as it lazily existed until I noticed its abject failure to move. Having no pets and nearly no interest in them, I did not know whether this was normal or if the cat was sick and then the heat got to me, and I moved on. As I was hurrying back home to the cool embrace of another chilled interior, I spotted a water dispensary and it struck me that I could probably help the cat with some water, but having nothing to collect such water, I didn’t pursue it.
So that’s how I stumbled upon a queasy philosophical thought. If I had known for sure the cat was sick, I would have gone to a nearby store and bought some water to serve this sick beast. It was simple enough, wouldn’t be more than a five-minute detour. But not knowing for sure whether the cat was sick, made the effort seem misplaced or even disproportionate. So, if the cat was sick, I’d have helped, but because the cat was either sick or not sick, I had walked past it. I became increasingly bothered by the certainty that it was uncertainty that was causing my continued inaction. Was this Schrodinger’s point all along?[1] It’s just like when I refuse to check my bank balance for days even though I could be financially solid or totally broke because until I check it, I could at least theoretically be fine. Same for unopened emails and doctor visits that could confirm scary diagnoses. And then to think of uncertain futures. Like how I am not giving up everything and permanently moving to Costa Rica because the world could either become a dumpster fire in my lifetime or it could not. And thus, heady on my drunken pseudo-philosophical extrapolations, I took a hard look at my life, marred by so much resistance and non-fulfillment.
I reached home, certain that I had discovered some sort of untrodden philosophical embankment wherein hidden deep underneath the sand, lay some sort of answers to my life. Unbothered by the possibility of a world where the cat could actually be really sick, unaware that there was another thought experiment that more closely applied to my conundrum. Totally and blissfully happy.
[1] It was not. Schrodinger was trying to make a point about how simple misinterpretations of quantum theory can lead to absurd results which do not match the real world.
Analogue Living 