Calm: educate yourself in the art of remaining calm, and learn how to defend yourself from panic and fury (The School of Life Library) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The School of Life is a global organisation helping people to lead more fulfilled lives. We do this via our articles, books, app, films, therapeutic services and corporate offering.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Our range of books and products explore essential topics in psychological and emotional life, including relationships, parenting, friendship, careers and fulfilment.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

iii. Space

Sometimes we respond quite negatively to encounters with things that are much larger and more powerful than ourselves. It's a feeling that can strike us when we are alone in a new city, trying to negotiate a vast railway terminal or the huge underground system at rush hour, and we sense that no-one knows anything about us or cares in the least for our confusions. The scale of the place forces upon us the unwelcome fact that we don't matter very much in the greater scheme and that the things that are of great concern to us don't figure much at all in the minds of others. It's a potentially crushing, lonely experience that intensifies anxiety and agitation.

But there's another way an encounter with the large scale can affect us - and calm us down.

Heading back to the airport after a series of frustrating meetings, the sunset behind the mountains is magnificent: tiers of clouds are bathed in gold and purple, huge slanting beams of light cut across the urban landscape. To record the feeling without implying anything mystical, it seems as if one's attention is being drawn up into the radiant gap between the clouds and the hills, and that one is for a moment merging with the cosmos. Normally the sky isn't a major focus of attention, but now it's mesmerising. For a while it doesn't seem to matter so much what happened in the meeting or the fact that the contract will - maddeningly - have to be renegotiated by the Paris team. It's strangely calming and comforting to be absorbed in the contemplation of something vastly bigger than oneself.

Artist and philosophers have given this feeling a name: the Sublime. We experience this sensation of the Sublime whenever we are hugely impressed by something that seems much larger and more powerful than we are. It overwhelms us with its grandeur while also offering us a vivid sense of our own relative littleness. At this moment, nature seems to be sending us a humbling message: the incidents of our lives are not terribly important in the scheme of things. And yet, strangely, rather than being distressing, this sensation can be immensely comforting and calming.

The Sublime is calming because it counteracts a persistent and very normal source of distress in our lives. Our minds naturally focus on what is immediately before us. We instinctively get deeply engaged with whatever happens to be close to us in space and time. And we have a proportionally less intense, more detached relationship to things that feel very far off. It's not a surprising arrangement. Very often, what's immediately present is more relevant to our survival than what happened five years ago or might happen much later in our lives. Our minds are geared to fleeing a snake or staving off hunger. 

Translated into the terms of modern life, it means that last night's squabble over flecks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror and the work deadline of Tuesday morning feel hugely agitating - though in terms of the overall meaning of a relationship, career or of a whole life, they are in fact pretty minor incidents. The problem is, our minds are structured so as to give maximum attention to what is happening now - whereas, to actually see the importance of anything we have to situate it in a much larger frame of reference.