Even we human beings — I’m not a thing. I’m a net of interactions with the world around me, with the people who know me, who love me. It’s a more powerful way of trying to grasp reality by focusing on what interacts with what and how, and somehow, the objects are just the nodes of interactions. They’re not a primary thing; they’re a secondary thing, I think.

In fact, I find it reassuring, not scaring, the fact that this is a short life, and that’s it. And in fact, I find — because of psychology, we have — this is what makes it precious. That’s why we like it. That’s why we love it. If I had to live forever, which I would be scared to death of living forever, because life is beautiful but also, painful, sometimes. I don’t want to live forever. I want to live for a short time and as better as I can, and better with my fellow travelers through time and expressing part of me. And I think that this fragility, this lack of full knowledge, this limitation of life, is something one can live very well with, and is much more reassuring than any potential of knowing the bottom of truth of reality or any idea of living forever.

It is part of our nature to love and to be honest. It is part of our nature to long to know more and to continue to learn. Our knowledge of the world continues to grow. There are frontiers where we are learning and our desire for knowledge burns. They are in the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, at the origins of the cosmos, in the nature of time, in the phenomenon of black holes, and in the workings of our own thought processes. Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking

  • Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli — All Reality Is Interaction | The On Being Project – The On Being Project