![]() No matter how much we try to take our attention away from these unpleasant experiences, our mind keeps coming back to them. In our day to day lives there are instances when certain things disturb us – it could be a rude comment, a scratch on the car or our own annoyance about not expressing ourselves in the best possible way in a meeting. The Overview Effect versus our sensitivities Our corporate life teaches us to zoom out, and see “the big picture” so that we can think and contribute beyond our individual goals and derive our sense of satisfaction from how our work helps the entire organisation including team members we may have never met. At work, we experience "The Overview Effect" a little differently. The similarities in how we live showed up on video calls - whether it was young little children running in the background, familiar household activities going on alongside or souvenirs displayed on the cabinets facing the camera. All of a sudden, our friends and colleagues all over the world were experiencing very similar fears. The pandemic made this interconnectedness very clear, not only in how the disease spread but also in terms of how we experienced it. We get a little bit of perspective about the interconnected nature of life. Only a select few get a chance to travel to space, but I think as we journey through life, we experience our version of “The Overview Effect”. “When you go above the planet, what you see is a system that is highly connected and interwoven.” “You can’t see the boundaries over which we fight wars, and in a very real way, the inhabitants of this Earth are stuck on a very beautiful, lovely little planet in an incredibly hostile space, and everybody is in the same boat.” Here are two wonderful quotes from the book, “The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution” by Frank White. While the expressions and words used to describe this experience may differ, there is an underlying similarity in these messages brought back by astronauts. “People of the earth, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty, and not destroy it”. In 1961, when Yuri Gagarin returned from his space voyage, he said: This love for the planet comes with respect for all those who inhabit it. Astronauts who have experienced “The Overview Effect” report an inner transformation of sorts where they begin to feel a strong urge to protect the planet. Reading about the earth being like a blue-green marble in the infinite emptiness of space is one thing, but watching it from a distance, while still feeling emotionally connected with it, creates a whole new shift with respect earth’s place within the universe and our place within the earth. ![]() Experiencing this fragility and vulnerability of the earth relative to the vastness of space brings about a spontaneous reframing of reality. It appears as a pale blue-green dot spinning in a vast empty space. When astronauts look back at the earth, they experience a profound appreciation for the fragility with which the Earth is held in space. Over three decades back, author and space philosopher, Frank White coined the term “ The Overview Effect” to describe a phenomenon reported after space voyages.
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