I still have the image of 'recognize yourself in the people around you, including your enemies, and recognize your enemy within yourself' from the Middle Kingdoms series, but I forget if there are scenes where this is spelled out exactly for the YW/FW books.
The first thing to come to mind is ridding Balor/entropy from everyone at the battle in the climax of A Wizard Abroad, but are there other scenes like it elsewhere?
In High Wizardry, Dairine is at one point arguing in favor of allowing entropy into the Mobile's lives, literally taking the Lone One's usual position, because she recognizes that any plan to completely eradicate death from the equation will result in a horrific stasis that allows for no life, no growth, ect.
Fortunately, the mobiles end up making about as good a Choice as any species can, but there was a hot minute where Dairine was almost frozen in carbonite for the rest of eternity
In Wizards on Holiday there's a similar situation for an organic species, with the Lone Power carefully permitted to remain on the planet, but in a defanged form, living in unhappy luxury until such a time as the species in question fully moves on from the mortal realm.
Hmm - I was thinking more individual to individual - a bit like Mamvish, but also Nita connecting Joanne with the Lone Power at the end of book 1, now I think about it.
The sheer aesthetic of, both, seeing a reflection of yourself/your problems in an entirely different context, and being able to come up with the solution to both problems... (this is probably not the same, but still related, as the initial top comment.)
In High Wizards, Dairine realizes that the reason she can hear the LP talking isn't from Logo but because as someone living in entropy, It was a part of her all along
Thus resulting in her brief attempt to take it out by bringing all fragments of the LP into herself and dying, and later talking It into accepting a place back with the other Powers
I know I have issues with patience - a lot of my problems come from poor impulse control when under temper (so I, uh. relate to Dairine and Nita somewhat. slightly.)
And on the other hand, take these - let's assume they're wizards, no? (First leap to work of fiction) They're tasked with saving the world, only - oh no! it's their world being destroyed, this time! maybe this is normal, maybe it isn't; point is, all their superiors are gone.
In the course of saving their world, they pull on a failsafe that's supposed to physically restore their world - but said power only works when it's not their planet that's just been destroyed.
now, instead of being able to go for people who've faced similar situations for help (and the other more basic assist of psychological counseling for trauma), they've managed to make their world... not exist??? to any other world's worth of wizards.
and even if it HAD worked, they wouldn't have been able to solve that aforementioned 'what are these things destroying our world, do they even think, and if so WHY did they think this was a good idea?!?!' problem.
and on ANOTHER level, those beings destroying worlds... just want recognition. they were the unsaved, the fallen, the lost - but the nature of how they were lost means they aren't quite dead; that in fact, they CAN'T die. they can't really think either, only feel - and so they lash out at whole worlds, civillizations...
but here's the thing - they COULD have been remembered, because the nature of interaction between life and this plane of existence WAS being studied - by the peoples (and of course, wizards) of the world that they just destroyed here.
so if they had ALSO waited, they could have gotten the recognition they wanted! not just on that one world, but on ALL the worlds, as word was passed around such that no one could ignore those lost to experiments on this plane of existence (or worse, all the nameless accidents with that plane that must have happened along the way...)
So Dairine's epiphany works, I think - and then there's Mamvish's moment, where she gets the idea for the rafting project, though that's more an example of epiphany/how things can be connected.
but the vibe I think I'm getting at is 'big problem gets matched with small problem; realization of nature of big problem fuels solving of smaller problem once the former is solved and stakes are scaled back down'.
Thanks.
I'm thinking of another example, but it's also pretty meta; let's see if I can try and set this up...
They're tasked with saving the world, only - oh no! it's their world being destroyed, this time! maybe this is normal, maybe it isn't; point is, all their superiors are gone.
they can't really think either, only feel - and so they lash out at whole worlds, civillizations...
Thank you for coming to my TED talk??