My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 2 #36, April 18, 1997

IT'S LIKE THIS...

Those of you who have been reading me for a while will have noticed that I am fond of metaphors. Indeed, in some of my columns (Dixieland Thought, Baxter in Charge) you may have thought I stretched a metaphor so far that if it was a rubber band it would have snapped in my face.

Maybe it's because I like to play with language anyway. But more likely it's because some of the ideas I toy with are vague and abstract and hard to communicate to people. Metaphor is a way of clarifying meaning, by fixing a vivid mental picture to that abstraction.

For example, I think of my life before I met my husband. I had been wary, suspicious, untrusting, expecting hurt from everyone I met. Then I fell into a warm circle of love and friendship that finally made me feel good about myself. For seven years, it seemed like the only water I swam in was in a warm spa--I finally stopped expecting to see sharks. Since I didn't have to spend all that emotional energy protecting myself from strangers, I could be warmer, more outgoing, more open to them. And they generally responded in kind.

I have some younger friends who drastically overrate my kindness, who think, somehow, that I was born nice. And I tell them that, no, I was simply lucky in my friends, and that the best thing I could wish for them is this: some day they too will be happy enough to stop looking for sharks.

Metaphors are one of the ways I explain myself. You know, I always planned to have a lot of kids. But since one son was all I got, I simply "adopt" people who already got themselves raised. (We all can use more family than what we were born with, after all.) I think that what I'm good at doing for them is not so much telling them what to do, but suggesting what questions they should ask before they decide. I give them a different perspective on their ideas or problems. Like the wall on a racquetball court-- I take what they throw at me and send it right back to them, though often at entirely unexpected angles, with unusual spins and twists.

Metaphors help explain my eccentric politics. I had told one of my young friends that I thought this was the last year I was going to be a Democrat, that I was deeply discouraged with both major parties and was looking for a better alternative. He thought I should vote libertarian, and I was appalled at the notion. Libertarianism is all very well for people who think they can stand alone against the world, provide for all their needs themselves, and never need assistance or comfort. It's a party for people who believe in taking great risks, for the possibility of great rewards--they're like giant trees, standing alone against the elements, reaching toward the sky at risk of violent winds and lightning.

But me--well, I'm more of a vine sort of person. I stay pretty close to the ground, inching my way along, sending out little shoots and tendrils, trying to connect to others. The risks I take are small ones--the emotional risks of trying to connect with people who might reject your offer. But the risks are worth it, because more often than not, I find more people to love.

Some of my favorite songs are metaphors for important ideas. Something Happens has a song called "Parachute," which I think of as an extended metaphor for growing up. Having just sent a grown-up manchild out into the world, I respond intensely to these words:

Take a parachute and jump, there's going to have to be some danger.
Take a parachute, and jump--you're going to have to take flight.
And if the winds don't catch you, I will, I will.

Hard as it may be for kids to make that necessary leap, it's harder for us as parents to let them go. We KNOW they'll make mistakes. We KNOW they'll get hurt.

And we know that it will cripple them if we don't let them go, let them take what we have taught them and go where their own vision leads them. (I have to admit I talk a better game than I can play on this one. My son has to warn me from time to time about creeping mom-ishness.)

Another thing, when you get to my age, you start thinking a little more often about death. All of a sudden it starts seeming less abstract, a lot more immediate--the bedtime you won't wake up from, because this time, there really is a beast in the closet. That's why I respond so powerfully to a song, called "Dust and a Shadow," which says:

Oh pretty little boy, and you my millionaire
When the time comes, you go alone.
Leave a light on, at the top of the stairs.

Much as metaphors resonate in me, though, I know that they can also deceive and mislead us. Sometimes, the metaphor we choose is a false one. Thinking with mistaken metaphors like the domino theory has led us into ill-advised wars. I am always suspicious of politicians who use metaphors drawn from war or football, because it suggests the only way they know how to think is in terms of us winning and everybody else losing. A metaphor can trap you, if you believe in it and are therefore unable to think outside its framework. You know what they say about the man with a hammer in his hands--all problems start looking like they can be solved by pounding.

Metaphors can open your mind and close it at the same time. Think about the hardscrabble world of the settlers of the American west in the late 19th century, living bare-subsistence lives--and then they received their first Sears and Roebuck catalog. It presented such undreamed of vistas of consumer goods that it expanded people's imaginations and wants. But at the same time, that catalog made it nearly impossible to envision a need that wasn't filled within it. It simultaneously expanded our possibilities and narrowed them down to things that could be delivered by RFD.

People like me who fall in love with metaphors especially need to be wary of them--it's way too easy for us to be enticed and swept away by them. We have to know how to use our metaphors and not be used by them. And when to let them go because they do not serve us well anymore.

But as long as we keep that in mind, our metaphors are a lovely, playful useful tool for thought.

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NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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