The Order of Time

by Carlo Rovelli

Now he is no longer with us. I can’t question him anymore, or tell him what I think. I can no longer tell him that it seems to me that his ideas are correct, and that they have guided me throughout a lifetime of research. I can no longer tell him I believe that he was the first to come close to the heart of the mystery of quantum gravity. Because he is no longer here—here and now. This is time for us. Memory and nostalgia. The pain of absence. But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.