Metaphors

Now, over the past few months, I've been thinking a lot about metaphors. Good, old metaphors that help us get through the days. Do you know the kind I mean? Maybe not--I'm not coming right out and explaining them. So I will.

Here's an example. I looked down at my knee one day and saw a bruise. I had no idea how I'd gotten it. I had to think back. Oh yeah, I finally remembered, I did bang my knee a few days ago. I guess it just takes a while for bruises to form. That phrase--"it takes a while for bruises to form"--starting echoing through my head.

It's something true of life, too, I realized. We get hurt, and it can take a while to sink in. We're in the middle of something else days later, talking to a friend maybe, and suddenly something in the conversation bumps into us where we were hurt. Ouch, we think. Why does it hurt when she tells a joke about someone making a mistake? It hurts because a few days before, maybe someone yelled at you for a mistake you made. And it's taken a little while for the bruise to form. The emotional bruise will fade, though, just as the one on my knee did.

Metaphors like this help me. I have something physical to relate to something unseen. In this case, it's the reminder that that some out-of-nowhere emotional bump isn't anything to get all worried about. I don't have to analyze it, worry about how I'll get over a neurosis, it's just somewhere I've been recently bruised. And it will go away.