My metaphors

In the book Metaphors We Live By, the author George Lakoff makes the case that humans best understand abstract ideas through physical metaphors.

Here is a running list of metaphors that are useful to me:

• Life is a river. We find ourselves in the present, unable to change the past, able to chart our course to different futures. “You have a right to your actions, but never your action’s fruits.” — The Bhaghavad Gita
• Time is a rock jar. There are unlimited rocks we can put into the limited jar of our lives.
• Activism is a ball pit. Any activist cause, for example, disability rights or environmental regeneration, has many individual projects — balls — that can be helpful to the overarching cause. We can be part of the solution by helping a ball or two or three come into being. We don’t have the power to individually “fix” the entire issue. Credit: New Happy by Stephanie Harrison.
• Love is opening the blinds. Visualize a dark night, and a house illuminated on the inside with all the lights on. Now visualize the blinds opening, letting that light out of the window into the world. This simple visualization helps me get into the embodied feeling of love. A mantra to say while visualizing this: may you be happy, may you have ease, may you feel alive. Credit: New Happy.
• The mind is a garden. The plants we water, be they weeds or seeds, are the ones that will grow. Credit: Thich Naht Hanh.
• Indra’s net. This ancient symbol is saying that within each of us is a reflection of the whole universe. Credit: Sharon Saltzberg’s Real life.
• Positive change is a path, not a lightswitch.
• People are cracked teacups.
• A relationship is a venn diagram. There is the overlap, and the relationship you have with yourself.
• A relationship is a house you co-build. Credit: John Gotteman and Stephanie Harrison.
• A romantic partner is a co-artist on life’s tapestry.
• Values (e.g. friendship, health, learning, love, spirituality) are infinite games, the goal is to keep playing, not to “win” a specific outcome.
• Heaven and hell are places we visit and create in the present moment, in this here life, not in the future.
• The prairie fire burns everything down, but activates the seeds and nourishes the earth for new growth.