Brain Food #687
The View from Above
Thoughts of the day
Following from yesterday’s theme on how Stoicism can help us understand what we should focus our energies on changing, another of the main ideas behind it is working on our ability to view things from a distance, using the ‘view from above’.
It is a meditative act, starting with shifting your view to a third-person perspective, and asking you to imagine yourself slowly floating away, ending with the universe, and thinking of your presence in it not just as a speck in terms of space, but also in terms of time.
Reminiscent of Carl Sagan’s infamous and inimitable Pale Blue Dot speech, the exercise asks us to view ourselves not as an isolated figure in the world, but as part of an immense whole.
Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“Think of substance in its entirety, of which you have the smallest of shares; and of time in its entirety, of which a brief and momentary span has been assigned to you; and of the works of destiny, and how very small is your part in them.”
We tend to view the world from within, trapped within our own bodies, our consciousness, and the experiences and biases that come with living. Yet, we often forget to notice how small we are to affect the actions of someone else, the way the Earth spins. In a humbling manner, having a view from above is an act of compassion that nudges our awareness towards a greater understanding — an acceptance of others, and of things, as they are.
Sitting on a plane can offer this experience to an extent (at least to those of us who cannot afford a trip to space). For me, the feeling is amplified at night, the world beneath you, reduced to little shimmering lights, thousands or even millions of lives happening in a single view. Somewhere down there is our life and our worries, intermingled with those of others.
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