Stoic practice · 4–5 min

The View From Above

Widen space and time, then return with one deliberate action.

Use when: anger, grief, self-importance, reputation anxiety, a small problem felt as huge

How the practice works

1. Read the frame Look down from above on the countless herds of men, and their countless solemnities, and voyagings of every kind in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and die.
2. Name the situation Bring to mind the thing that's testing you today. See it plainly.
3. Run the exercise Settle where you are. Let your breathing slow on its own. You don't need to change it — just notice it. Bring to mind the thing that's testing you today. See it plainly. Don't argue with it — just hold it in view for a moment. Now, in your imagination, begin to rise. Lift up out of this room, until you can see the roof below you, and the street, and the buildings around it. Keep rising. See your whole town, or city — the roads, the lights, thousands of people you'll never meet, each one carrying a day as full as yours. Higher still. The land opens beneath you — coastlines, mountains, whole countries. Marcus wrote that from this height the largest human affairs look small: the herds of people, their ceremonies, their journeys through storm and calm. Cities rise, and in time crumble. Rise until the whole earth hangs before you — a single sphere, turning slowly in the dark. Now widen time as you've widened space. Behind the earth, all the generations that have already lived and died. Ahead of it, all those still to come. Your own life is one moment in that long procession. From here, look back at the thing you were carrying. See it against the whole of space, and the whole of time. See that everything down there is bound together — one living whole, of which you are a part. Nothing to grasp at. Nothing to fear. Let the sense of the whole settle over you. When you're ready, begin to descend. Back through the generations, back to the earth, the land, your city, this street, this room. Bringing the wider view down with you.
4. Record what you notice What looks different from the wider view?
5. Choose the next action Now that you've seen it against the whole — what's the one small, deliberate thing that's actually yours to do about it?

“Look down from above on the countless herds of men, and their countless solemnities, and voyagings of every kind in storms and calms.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.30