Using Metaphors - Examples

Purposely using metaphors to change your perspective and therefore your understanding, can be a very practical way to get better results in life. We use metaphors all the time, often without even noticing, and not always to good effect, so why not become more conscious of the ones we use? "My life is in the crapper," might become "Fortunately, I've been involuntarily enrolled in the school of hard knocks so I can learn some very valuable life lessons."

Sometimes using metaphors means turning them around and seeing other aspect of them. For example, a man might feel that he is a puppet, being pulled this way and that, made to dance on cue and generally under the control of various puppet masters. But what if he takes another look at that, with a slight change to the metaphor? He decides that he has been a puppet, but that he was the one holding onto the strings. Freedom is as simple as letting go.

This isn't just a more pleasant way to see the situation. It is a better understanding, meaning one that more closely describes the reality. That is why it resonates with him. He sees that the "strings" controlling him are of his own making. They are his desire to win the approval of others, for example, or his fear of losing a job he never liked anyhow.

This new way of seeing allows him to drop the fear and false desires. He does not have to hold onto anything which doesn't serve him. If you have not ever experienced a change that comes quickly with a new understanding, you need to play with those metaphors some more. They can point to truths that profoundly alter how you live.

Inventing Metaphors

Using metaphors invented for a specific purpose is another way to alter your perspective and discover better ways to approach life. By the way, you may not have noticed that "approach" is a metaphor here. What was once a concept of physically moving towards something became a way to describe mentally coming towards something. Metaphors are the start of new understandings, and though we eventually lose the connection (who consciously notices that "head of the class" is a body metaphor any longer?), we can create even newer ways to see.

Beyond just inventing new metaphors using existing words, we can even create new words that convey a different way to understand something. In fact, I'll start right there, with "understand." Some researchers have suggested that the word came as a description of how people actually "stood under" their leaders or even their carved idols to take instructions. We don't often think of the word as having a metaphorical basis, but "under" plus "stand" clearly must have started as a metaphor of some sort.

My new word, then, is "overstand." What does it mean? My current definition (I'm still working on this): "To impose one's existing ideas, opinions and feelings on a subject when considering it. For example, a person want his political theory to be correct, so he only considers evidence which confirms it. People often "overstand" things, meaning they "stand over" it, in effect creating their own "truth" rather than looking to discover and accept reality as it is.

By contrast, to understand is to "stand under" something - specifically the truth. It is to be subservient to the truth. We might say that true power comes from true understanding: seeing reality without illusion or delusion or the desire that it conform to our existing beliefs and ideas.

What we call understanding is often "overstanding," which gives us a sense of power because it confirms what we want to be true - without much regard for reality. It is a false and precarious power, of course. You don't get to ignore reality for long without consequences.

Now, if using a metaphor like that makes any sense, it is only because it points to something we can see (another metaphor), and hopefully in a way that helps us see more clearly. There really are different ways to "understand" aren't there? Now, when you sense or see that your own or another person's grasp of something doesn't quite "line up" with reality (yet another metaphor), you might ask yourself if the understanding is actually an overstanding.