When I was four I got lost in a department store.

I ran through the aisles crying. Then I spotted them. Brown pants. Dark shoes. My dad's uniform. I ran over and grabbed on.

Not my dad. When I looked up, he laughed. I ran away screaming. 

Looking back, I spent most of my life doing that. 

Grab whatever looks solid. Money. Companies. People who seem sure of themselves. I'd hold on tight and then look up and realize I had no idea who I was holding.

I didn't get it at four. I get it better now, thanks to a physicist.

His name is Carlo Rovelli. He works on quantum gravity. Black holes. What happened before the Big Bang. And what it all has to do with living a good life. His new book just came out. On the Equality of All Things.

I got him on the podcast. Today I wanted to share how Carlo changed the way I think about everything. Literally.

A.] Nothing is fixed. 

I’ve gotten rich and gone broke in the same year. The big house went. Most of the friends went. They were friends with the money.

I sat there for months asking one question. Who am I without all of it?

Turns out physicists ask that kind of question too. Not about themselves. About everything. 

What is a thing, by itself, with nothing around it?

Carlo said it’s the wrong question. Physicists now understand that things are defined by their relationships. Nothing is fixed. 

That’s why "Who am I, really?" has no answer either. 

Better questions do have answers. Who am I to my kids? Who am I to my friends? Who am I to the people who read what I write?

When I asked those, I had plenty to work with. The money was gone. Those connections were still there.

Stop digging for the real you underneath everything. Look at who you're connected to. That's the real you. That’s where you are.

B.] Certainty kills learning.

After I sold my first company, I was sure I was a genius. I threw money everywhere. Sure of every bet.

Turns out, that's how you lose $15 million.

Carlo says every generation of scientists thinks it knows almost everything there is to know. Every generation is wrong. 

Newton wrote his masterpiece and ended it by admitting he didn't know why gravity works. The people who discovered the most never thought they were finished.

I've started more than 20 companies. Most failed. The ones that failed biggest were the ones I was most sure about.

C.] We're not standing outside the universe.

Carlo kept saying one thing in different ways. We don't get a view from outside.

We're not gods looking down at the world. We're little animals in the forest looking around. Everything we know, we know from inside.

I used to think growing up meant getting to the balcony. Enough money, enough experience, enough therapy, and I'd finally get to look at my life from above and see what it really was.

Never happened. The balcony doesn't exist.

What exists is the aisle you're standing in. The chair you're sitting in. The person you're on the phone with. That's the whole view. Get good at that view

D.] Order happens on its own.

I tried one last time to get something solid out of him. Everything falls apart, right? Apples rot. Stones turn to sand. People die.

He said no.

Pour vinegar in a glass of water. It mixes forever. Pour oil in water and stir it. Wait. The oil separates. It finds its own shape. Nobody touches it.

Galaxies did that. Life did that. Cities did that.

I did that too. When everything fell apart, I didn't have a plan. I just kept going, one day at a time. A great life slowly formed around it.

Decay is real. So is order.

What I took away.

I spent an hour trying to get Carlo to tell me what’s solid. What’s real.

He said nothing is. Not even atoms. Everything only exists in relation to something else.

I was four years old again, holding a stranger's brown pants.

The whole lesson: look up and ask better questions. Who am I connected to? The friends I keep. The ideas I let in. The people I learn from.

That's the whole thing. 

If you need something to do with this information: call someone you love. That call, and that person, is where you are. 

And then listen to the whole podcast right here.