Perspective

Derren Brown goes back to the accusation that Stoics don't change anything, and takes it seriously. He points out that the Stoics were the statesmen and emperors of Rome, then finds a third prong in the Stoic Fork: the things you can partly control. Book Nine of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations says you needn't build Plato's Republic; small changes will do. Brown adds Bill Irvine's tennis match, where playing to win makes you play worse, and states the rule: high intention, low expectation.

The turn is spatial. Marcus tells himself to make large room by contemplating the whole of time; Brown sets that beside Rilke's people who live in a big room or one corner of a small one, and beside the view from above. He ends with a story about a colleague who was bugging him, and the moment his mind jumped to the end of his life and saw everyone, annoying or beloved, as the cast who populated it.