| Hello Dear One,
I’m just curious. Have you ever found yourself up a creek without a paddle, feeling like you were shit-out-of-luck or that things were going to Hell in a hand-basket?
Have you every felt light as a feather, happy as a lark or bursting with excitement?
For the past few months I’ve been playing around with metaphors.
You understand that I don’t actually want you to “break a leg”. I might tell you to “get your head out of your ass” but truly, is that really where your head is? I might feel like a million dollars but … hahaha … you get the point.
Metaphors. You can grasp a hand. You can also grasp an idea. You can bend a stick. You can bend a rule.
Metaphors are sprinkled all though our thoughts and conversations, usually without our realizing it.
Right from birth we experience the world though comparisons and a metaphorical landscape we organically begin to construct. Before we have words, our sensing compares what we experience … “this is like mom’s heart beat” … “this comforts me like, floating in the womb.” Our infant- self begins to discover the world through metaphorical relationships.
“Metaphor is a way of thought long before it’s a way of words,” James Geary writes in his intriguing book, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes The Way We See the World “Metaphorical thinking — shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent.”
I’ve become fascinated and curious about that last sentence …“Metaphorical thinking — shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent.”
You and I have a shared understanding of many metaphors. “I don’t know where it’s going but this hand-basket sure is picking up speed”, is a bit of humor that makes us laugh because we share a metaphor.
But we also use metaphors that are uniquely ours; personal associations and meaning that invite our heart and soul to have their own voice. These unique metaphors have the potency to slide below the surface of our consciousness and become catalysts for organic growth and change. They bring us to places too deep for literal languaging.
The past few months I’ve been exploring ways of asking simple questions that facilitate someone to illicit their own unique, potent and enlivening metaphors. My discoveries have been intriguing and surprising. The Joseph Campbell quote “If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor” leads me to “if you want to change your life, you have to change your metaphor.”
I’ve been astonished at how quickly an experience can shift through metaphor. I’m excited about the juicy ways what I’m learning has been enhancing the depth and richness to the coaching I offer and I’m inviting you to join me in a little metaphorical exploration. Check out the note at the bottom of this message and let me know if you want to play.
As I write this, I’m feeling rooted like the almond tree in my yard. The morning breeze is caressing me with the tenderness of a lover. Possibilities are sprouting in my heart and I’m curious to see how they blossom.
And I’m smiling at you with love across the miles,
Sharon
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