Recently, we addressed the topic of metaphor. Metaphors are embedded (ha! another metaphor!) in our language. Life is a journey. Love is a journey. An argument is war. An illness is war. We have given metaphorical form and concreteness to abstract concepts and, in doing so, we have shaped the way we think. To demonstrate how this works, we were tasked with the idea of creating new metaphors, and then create sayings or idioms for that metaphor.
*Silence* Say what?
My partner and I sat in bewilderment for a time, as did the rest of the class. Half-sentences filled the air: "What if...? No, that won't work." "How about...? Wait, that's the same thing..."
Sometimes, I get inspired. And I came up with a metaphor. LIFE, I proclaimed grandly (or would have, if my thought process was in any way linear), IS LIKE A CD.
Bear with me.
How CD's are a metaphor for life:
1. You're getting played. (Okay, so I appropriated that idea.)
2. He/she isn't even a chorus (in your love song).
3. You are the lead singer of your own life.
4. One day, you'll find your perfect duet. (We all retched a bit at that one. Sorry.)
5. Your life is a concept album.
AND...*drumroll*
6. Live a life worth pirating.
Another proposed metaphor I enjoyed was: Life is a Book. Yes, that one's already sort of a metaphor (a new chapter in our lives, reading body language, etc.), but they had fresh sentences, ones that made me pause and think for a moment.
1. We are edited by experience.
2. We feel valued when we are being read.
Even though it was a difficult exercise, it was exciting. We were thinking about life from a whole new perspective. We were reshaping our worldview with just a tweak of language.
And people say English classes have no value.
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