Tricycle | Awake in the World

We sometimes speak of losing perspective: overstretched, overburdened, we find ourselves lashing out at a loved one, letting slip a snide remark that we immediately regret. Or else, caught up in our own challenges, we lose awareness of other people’s lives, and of the world. There is a passage in Plato’s Phaedrus that describes how the perfect soul “soars upward and brings order to the whole world.” It describes a way of restoring perspective: if we imaginatively rise above our experience and look down from above, we see ourselves within a much wider frame—and find order in the world.