Perspective
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The School of Life Perspective set, is a set of 20 cards featuring fresh perspectives through which to look at life. Perspectives to restore calm and clarity.
We are constantly at risk of losing perspective around the challenges we face. We mistake what is manageable for a catastrophe; we despair...
The School of Life Perspective set, is a set of 20 cards featuring fresh perspectives through which to look at life. Perspectives to restore calm and clarity.
We are constantly at risk of losing perspective around the challenges we face. We mistake what is manageable for a catastrophe; we despair of ourselves too soon; we alienate others by over-reacting; we don’t notice and appreciate what there is still to be grateful for; we forget we’re going to die and that a lot of today’s headache will soon be forgotten.
These cards provide eloquent invitations to recover a wiser, calmer, redemptive perspective on our lives.
Each card identifies a fresh perspective we might take on problems – perspectives coloured by time, space, history, culture and travel among others – nudging us gently and compassionately towards a more liveable relationship with our difficulties.
Details
Measures 16 x 11.5 cm
Counts 20 cards
Examples:
1 – The Oldest Living Tree
This not very tall spruce tree (it’s only five metres in height) has been standing on a ridge of the Fululfjlallet mountain in Sweden for more than nine thousand years. It has kept going in the face of appalling weather in quiet obedience to the same basic forces that have always governed its existence: rain, sunlight, wind and the nutrients it imperceptibly draws from the forbidding rocky soil beneath it.
2 – A Child Looking at Ants
The child doesn’t know the science of insect life – but they’re newly astonished by the strangeness of existence nevertheless. What would it be like to be a miniscule creature marching in file towards a tiny fissure at the base of a brick wall? Do they have friends? Do they get sad? Do they know they are being watched? The least thing, properly attended to, could furnish a lifetime of thought. We don’t have to stop speculating, as we once did.
3 – The Middle of the Night
The entire country – almost – must be asleep; our minds are free to wander, for a little while. Unusually grand questions seem powerfully relevant: what have I done with my life, where am I going? We revise assumptions: was that rejection that felt so painful at the time actually a veiled invitation we didn’t know how to read: they said ‘later’, we thought it meant never. A remark we made years ago suddenly strikes us as deeply embarrassing. We feel sorry for kindnesses we failed to show. We are larger, more complex – often nicer and more interesting – beings than is apparent in the daytime. Could we dare to show others more of our middle–of–the–night selves?
4 – The Desert
We couldn’t survive here long on our own; but the empty, vast spaces are inviting to the mind. Our own lives – and our concerns – are on a tiny scale, by comparison. Things that have up until now been looming so large (what’s gone wrong with the Singapore office, a colleague’s cold behaviour, the disagreement about patio furniture) is cut perfectly down in size. Local, immediate sorrows are reduced; none of our troubles, disappointments or hopes have very much significance for a time.
The School of Life at Misc-store Amsterdam
The School of Life is devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture. We address such issues as how to find fulfilling work, how to master the art of relationships, how to understand one’s past, how to achieve calm and how better to understand, and where necessary change, the world.
At Misc-store, we love The School of Life because their items make a great gift for ourselves and others. Back in 2013 we started with a range of The School of Life items in store, and we are so happy that we can extend our range with all their new items, focusing on the job we have, appreciating small pleasures and the things that might go unnoticed.
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About The School of Life
Alain de Botton founded The School of Life in 2008. His aim was to make philosophy — long seen as the inaccessible, inauthentic stuff of academies and archives — a functional aspect of modern life. The care with which ancient philosophers thought about their lives remains a valuable antidote to the generalised anxiety of our era.
The school thus posits that ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics are as relevant to us today as they were in ancient Greece. Even if Epicurus never had social media burnout, understanding his thinking can lead us to a healthier relationship with , for example, our phones — and by extension, with one another.
We began stocking The School of Life’s series on work, gratitude and pleasure as a way of thinking through modern day issues. We admire their series for the capacity to stimulate reflection, and their ability to give a new perspective on age old problems. At its core, it is a set of strategies for finding meaning in the modern world — so that we can appreciate small pleasures and the things that might go unnoticed.