What is reality?
After leaving OpenAI I thought I was losing my mind because I started to question, “Well, what is reality?”
I now believe I'm right to ask, because I believe there are multiple different realities, and it's very confusing.
I've just completed a course on self-renewal. It's a multi-day retreat where you work in groups to try to find or redefine your own identity and your mission in life, and then figure out the big changes you want to make.
It was a relief to spend four days with a group of incredible people who are at a similar juncture to me, who are deeply redefining their own identities and goals, and who are seeking permission to be who they want to be and to decide what they want to do.
The most striking aspect for me was that every one of us seems to be living in a different reality.
What really blew my mind is that, for each of us, the rest of the group would be almost perplexed at the barriers we had come up with that were holding us in place. Someone would be blocked by the fear that by quitting their job, they would deeply disappoint their boss, who had also become their best friend. That fear was based on a made-up story, but was blocking what they felt they could do with their own life, in real life.
To all of us, it was clear these barriers are made up. These stories only exist in our brains. The fact that they block us is real, but the stories themselves are made up.
Of course, we could see this in each other much more easily than we could see it in ourselves.
And so it came to me that one of the reasons we work in teams, help each other, and build collective intelligence is actually to try to calibrate our reality.
What was amazing is that each of us walked out of the training with a different reality than we had come into it with.
The conclusion I draw from this is that I'm not crazy or losing my mind by asking, “What is reality?” It's a very legitimate question. After twenty years of sprinting like crazy at incredible but crazy-intense tech companies working on AI, I think I had been boxed into a very particular reality, with a very particular definition of what success is and a very particular "made up" identity.
To cut all of that is to throw yourself into a completely vast, undefined universe. And that is very scary because all of a sudden you have to reset what reality is.
The other thing I've come to realize is that it's impossible to do this on your own. You need to do this with the help of others, in community. Other people who spend time with you and who get to know you are your eyes and ears. They help you perceive a broader reality than you can on your own and, more importantly, help you calibrate. Is what I’m seeing actually real?
If you haven't done so, I invite you to find ways to ask those questions. But don't do it on your own. Find a peer group, find people who are also seeking, and help each other cast a broader net. Help each other see a broader reality, support each other, and calibrate on what's actually real.
It's okay to redefine one's identity and it's okay to redefine one's goals. But it's much easier if you do it in community. And don't just believe that your reality is the only reality.