The view from above is one of the simplest Stoic techniques to distance you from everyday concerns and to, almost literally, put things into perspective. You can use this to step back from troubles and to restore proportion. It will help you distance yourself from your negative thoughts about the world, about people, or other things which are causing you mental anguish.

“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.” - Marcus Aurelius, Mediations

But we don’t use this technique to deny or trivialize our pain, merely to offer perspective, to give us a moment or two to contemplate and to help prevent drowning in our sorrows. The pain is real.

We can use this technique by visualising or otherwise imagining ourselves as being both literally and metaphorically above the various things which are causing us sorrow or anguish. We can imagine ourselves hovering above our home and think about the number of people who live within that immediate area, and all their issues that they have, and perhaps how small our issues are in concern to those all those people who live there and their issues in aggregation.

“If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.” - attributed to Socrates and probably quoted by Plutarch, Letter to Apollonius 9 (106b)

The intention here is not to belittle your problems but to put them into the perspective of other people’s problems, and to remind you that you are not alone - you share suffering and anguish with many other people.

“Let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves.” - Bertrand Russell A Free Man’s Worship

There are people out there that you see every day and you just don’t know what they’re going through. You are obviously so concerned with your own experiences, both positive and negative, and sometimes it helps just to be outside yourself, using the view from above, and to consider that other people have problems similar to, and often much worse than, yours. Some people just get on with it and some don’t, some suffer immense pain, and you just have no way of knowing from outside which people are going through these tests. And, in the same way, they may see you and they don’t notice the big conflicts you’re going through. These issues are things that you’re concerned with, but you can also put them into context using this metaphorical perspective technique. We share this society with others, we are not alone.

“Humans have evolved to be a very social species whose very survival has depended upon the care, support and friendship of others.” - Paul Gilbert, Overcoming Depression

We could go further and perhaps imagine our entire town, city, county, country or continent from further above, and consider the hundreds of thousands or millions of people encompassed within that area, and similarly how they actually have issues which outweigh our own, and just perhaps how minuscule our own problems are in relation to those in total.

And we can go out even further way out into space and look back at the Earth, whether you’re thinking of the “pale blue dot” (https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot) and even further where the Earth is no longer visible. As Carl Sagan says, just how alone we are in the universe - this is all we have. This moment now is all we have. Some of what Sagan mentions I will return to in View from the Side, particularly these very Stoic feelings:

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.” - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Still on a space theme, when William Shatner (famous for portraying Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek) went into space in reality, he had a deeply profound experience of the world, mainly of grief and how we have mishandled our guardianship of the Earth. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/07/william-shatner-earth-must-live-long-and-prosper-aoe)

And at this cosmic scale, we should be reminded of from where we came and to where we will (boldly) go:

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.” - Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent; but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.” - Finn Butler