Tag: George Lakoff

Time as Metaphor

George Lakoff and Mark Turner point out in their book, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, that we “deal with time metaphorically”, just as we do with other abstract concepts such as life and death.  In a previous post, I discussed how a metaphor itself shapes our perceptions and world view and how poetry can enable us to change metaphors and break frames.   Time metaphors are pervasive in our everyday language and expose how we view time.

Time metaphors

In this current post, I discuss several time metaphors and explore ways to break free of the constraints in thinking and feeling that they elicit:

If only I had more time

The desire for “more time” is fraught with difficulty because “time” is finite in the sense that we only live one lifetime (normally, up to 100 years).  The saying suggests that we could do “more of the same, without reflecting on how we use our time”.  We need to review how we spend our time, e.g. in watching TV, sleeping, going to the movies, talking, spreading rumours, playing video games, engaging with social media, feasting on the news.  We can treat time as an endless commodity to be drawn on at will or view it as something that is finite and valuable.  We can waste time or fritter it away because we have not learned to value what time represents – our chance to learn, grow, contribute and support.  There is more to time than meets the eye.

Killing time

This is a way of saying: I need to use time up because I have too much time.  It suggests that  we are bored, have nothing positive or productive to do.  This is an opportunity to savour the freedom of boredom.  We are consumed by the need to be doing things all the time, to fill in time with activity.  The emphasis on “doing” instead of “being” creates its own stresses.  Boredom can be freeing in that it motivates us to be more creative in how we spend our time – the work that we do, our leisure choices, our creative pursuits, developing relationships, our mindfulness practices.  Arlie Russell Hochschild suggests that our need to be busy creates a Time Bind that means we are caught up in an obsessive need to fill in time with activity. In the workplace, we have to be seen to be busy – what Christine Jackman describes as “performative busyness”.

Running out of time

This expression often refers to an impending deadline, one that is externally imposed or self-created.  We can review the external deadlines in terms of importance and necessity and, where possible, negotiate a change in timeline.  Self-imposed timelines are time- traps of our own creation.  We can review them and question why we have created them – are they the product of limiting self-beliefs, a need to please, or a need to achieve?  In reviewing our self-imposed deadlines, we can ask ourselves, “How necessary are they?” “How could they be changed/adjusted?”  By way of example, when I started out writing this blog, I set myself the goal of daily blog posts. This became unsustainable when I started co-facilitating manager-development programs across the State. On the advice of my mentor, I changed my goal to two or three posts a week. I have subsequently adjusted my timeline again to reflect my desire to write a series of e-books based on this blog.  I now aim to write two 1,000 word posts per month, along with updating my archive page.  Adjusting our self-imposed deadlines for changed circumstances becomes essential if we are to avoid creating unnecessary stress.

Wasting time

We often hear the expression, “That’s a waste of time” or “Stop wasting time”.  The emphasis on waste is a recognition that time is a finite resource for our life here on earth.  Unfortunately, we spend so much time either thinking about the past or worrying about the future – catalysts for depression and anxiety.  Jake Bailey reminds us too that we can spend so much time on looking forward to tomorrow (and live in expectation of what it has to offer) that we lose sight of the present.  Elisha Goldstein in his book, The Now Effect, reminds us that being mindful of the present moment can change our life.  Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey reinforce this message in their book, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life.  They maintain that we speed up our lives when we live in the past, engage in self-judging or become overly-analytical of our daily life and its related problems.   They argue that the benefits of slowing down to the present moment (rather than racing ahead)  include improving our health and relationships, enjoying more peace and equanimity, reducing our stress and strengthening our focus and capacity to be productive.   

Time metaphors and chronic illness

 Jennifer Crystal – writer, educator and  author of One Tick Stopped the Clock – has written about the different perceptions of time and mindsets by people experiencing chronic illness and those close to people suffering from chronic illness.  In a blog post, The Time-Warp of Tick-Borne Illness, she discusses time metaphors in the context of her own experience of tick-borne chronic Lyme Disease.

Jennifer points out that we typically have a different relationship to time (and different time metaphors) at the various stages of our life.  As children, time does not move fast enough; as we become aged, we want time to slow down.  When people experience chronic illness, different time metaphors come into play.

Jennifer notes that she lost so much time through illness which delayed her degree graduation, her relationships and job/life plans.  For her during this period of chronic illness and a subsequent relapse, time moved too fast.  She felt an urgency to catch up with time.  However, her recovery depended on her slowing down and spending time on self-care.  Despite the feeling of having a lot of catching up to do,  Jennifer has had to move at her own pace to achieve her goals in her own time and to avoid further major relapses.

Jennifer noted that perceptions of time can be so very different for the well in comparison to the chronically ill. The former often wish for the free time that they see as the province of the chronically ill (time to lie around and read or watch TV).  What they don’t realise is that the chronically ill person often does not have the energy or pain-free experience to enjoy these envied activities.  Jennifer maintains that each side (the healthy and the chronically ill) need to develop an understanding of the perspective and experience of the other.  Even the healthy person experiences stressors and pain in this fast-paced world.

Reflection

In this post, I have concentrated on several time metaphors that can constrain our perception and mindset.  However, there are time metaphors that have positive connotations or that promote proactivity, such as a stitch in time saves nine.

In the March Creative Meetup, an online support group for writers-with-chronic-illness, Jennifer shared her blog post and offered two time-related writing prompts:

  1. How has your relationship to time changed with your illness?
  2. Imagine yourself springing forward or backward to a future or past moment in your life.  Write a letter to your future or former self from your current self.

 As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and other mindfulness practices, we can gain self-awareness about our own time metaphors and find creative ways to break the frames that constrain our thinking and mindset.

I developed the following poem while reflecting on time metaphors:

Time Metaphors

Time doesn’t wait,
it marches on.

We waste time when
killing time,
living for tomorrow,
buying our time,
waiting for the right time.

We express time regrets when we say
if only I had more time,
I have too much time on my hands,
time is going too fast,
if only I had my time over again.

We express frustration with time when we say
where has all the time gone?
I can’t wait till tomorrow comes,
I’ve run out of time,
I’m caught in the trap of time.

Time is restless, relentless, resilient, resourceful.

Time is opportunity
to learn, grow and create,
to care for self and others,
to be in the present moment,
to experience wonder and awe.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Poetry – Blending Opposites and Breaking Frames

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is the author of a poem-a-day as well as a dozen books of poetry.  Her daily poems can be accessed through her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils.  Her latest books of poetry – All the Honey and The Unfolding – were written after the death of her son and that of her father three months later.   Her son took his own life and Rosemerry’s grief expressed in her poems is palpable.   Rosemerry describes writing poetry as a mindfulness practice that has helped her manage her grief and an abiding sadness

Poetry – “a dance of opposites”

What is particularly distinctive about her poetry is the blending of opposites – pain and joy, sadness and wonder. Rosemerry considers poetry as “a dance of opposites”.  She maintains that poetry gives expression to opposites. This process enables her to hold two conflicting feelings at the same time.  Writing poetry helps her to rise above her sorrow – to be able to admire beauty and peace amidst pain and loss.

Her focus on what is good in her life enables her to manage the personal devastations that she has experienced.  While she gives full voice to her grief, her poetry expresses her gratitude and appreciation for the beauty and goodness that surrounds her daily.  She is able, through her poetry, to be fully present to what is  – the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Rosemerry asks the question, “How do we show up for these oppositional feelings?” such as grief and joy.  Her discussions cover not only feelings but also perceptions and mindsets.  In an interview about her book, The Unfolding, she tells the story of how she used to make assumptions about Ford car owners and their likely voting preferences.  To challenge this perception and mindset, she purchased a Ford car herself and found that by reaching across the mental divide she was able to perceive some commonality with other such owners. 

As I was listening, I recalled that I had developed a mindset about Mercedes owners, assuming they were thoughtless, constantly obsessed with “time is money” and caring little for other people’s needs.  Then two things happened – my wife and I were looking at buying a Mercedes ourselves (it was the best option available at the time to meet our needs) and a thoughtful Mercedes driver let me into a busy line of traffic.  These experiences challenged my perception and mindset.  Rosemerry asserts that poetry can also do this by helping us to take an alternative view and look at oppositional perceptions and mindsets.

Poetry: changing metaphors and breaking frames

In a TEDx Talk, Rosemerry spoke of the need to change metaphors if we are to accommodate oppositional thinking.  In her presentation, she quotes linguist George Lakoff who writes in his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, that “one of the fundamental findings of the cognitive sciences is that we think in terms of frames and metaphors”.  Neuroscience has identified the physical manifestation of this phenomenon in the form of neurocircuitry.

Rosemerry asserts that the use of metaphors is universal, employed in every language throughout the world, to enable us “to understand our world, our ideas and our emotions”.  She suggests that we just listen to, and carefully observe, everyday language, which is replete with metaphors, e.g. “the time is ripe”, “fell like a dead tree”, “he has a heart of gold”.   

She explains that behind each metaphor we use is a “conceptual frame” that shapes our perception of the world and our situation in it.  The frame allows a particular perception and interpretation and excludes other explanations – it constrains our freedom to explore alternative ideas.  Rosemerry gives the example of a constraining metaphor that occurred for her following the rejection of one her manuscripts and the acceptance of someone else’s.  She describes how the “envy metaphor” took over her thinking – she engaged in an endless comparison with the other person, inflating their positives and exaggerating her own negativities.  After a while, she began to realize that the envy metaphor did not serve her well but limited her perception of options.  Her comparisons with the other person were grossly distorted.

Rosemerry found that she had to find another metaphor to frame her situation to enable her to move forward, rather than wallow in her disappointment and resentment.  What helped her on this occasion was her tendency to push her metaphoric story to absurd limits – a form of reductio ad absurdum (Latin for “reduction to absurdity’}, e.g. she began to think that the other writer was a “better gardener” who had “greener fingers” – an analogy way beyond the writing competence of her perceived competitor.

How to change metaphors and break mental frames

In her TEDx Talk, Rosemerry offered a number of suggestions of how we might change our metaphor that is not working for us in a particular situation.  Her first offering might prove to be “too far-fetched” for some people but she offered it nonetheless. In this approach she suggests that you choose an object (any object} and you ask the object a number of questions, e.g. “What can you teach me today?”, “What is your purpose?”  This imagined interaction can lead to the identification of an alternative metaphor that may work in your new situation. 

Rosemerry also offers a second approach to metaphor change and frame breaking.  For this approach, she draws on the work of a friend who suggested that you take a line of poetry and change the words and ideas expressed in that poem.  By way of example she quoted a line from an Emily Dickinson’s poem, Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.  Rosemerry suggested that you use this line (or any other line of poetry} as a jumping off point to explore a new metaphor or frame of reference.  She offers some possible changes to the line such as persistence is the bindweed that pushes through the pavement.

Putting forth alternative lines opens up the possibility of identifying new metaphors or frames of reference that can create the freedom to think differently, to break through the constraints of an existing frame of reference. Rosemerry maintains that the changed metaphor can enable you “to see the world in ways that you have never seen the world before”  – this can be truly freeing and provide the opportunity to develop new perspectives and identify different options to address your situation.  She asks, “How might it [the new metaphor] change the way you approach your day?”

Reflection

I took a line about hope from Anne Frank’s book,  The Diary of a Young Girl, and changed it to read, Where there is hope there is exploration and openness, not closure.   At the time I was dealing with another psychotic episode suffered by my adult son.  This helped me to replace a “despair metaphor” with a “hope metaphor” – it helped me to see alternative outcomes and the possibility of healing. The process of reframing led me to develop the following poem where “he” became “we” and opened up a new understanding, as well as allowed space for hope:

Hope is Opening

He has been elevated again.
Why does he consume things that are harmful to himself and others?

Turning the mirror on myself,
why do I consume foods that are harmful to myself and others?

What are we seeking?
Is it an escape from boredom and the sense of exclusion?
Is it a search for companionship and connection?

Where there is hope, there is exploration of new pathways,
there resides openness and the end of closure.

If we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practises such as spending time in nature, conscious breathing and reflection, we can become more aware of own constraining metaphors and find creative ways to change our metaphors and break our imprisoning frames.

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Image by Loi Tran from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.