I don't know about you, but I'm perfectly comfortable with metaphors. They have this literary capacity to portray and convey big ideas with just a simple image. For instance, take the metaphor of the fallen tree next to our house....!
A magisterial Oak that's been soaring high above the homes here for over 100 years. Last night it suddenly collapsed. Without warning, this splendid castle of nature came crashing down from its roots up. A roaring whoosh....a crash of branches....house and shrubbery beneath scarred forever. Waking up to this was to witness a dramatic shift in the entire landscape of our street. Something once so much a permanent part of the scene and scenery, now gone forever. As if someone had suddenly ripped out a chunk of the old graduation picture you have hanging over the piano.
But, no, that's not the whole metaphor. It's not only the abrupt nothingness where once something was. It's the chattering squirrel I saw scampering along the fallen trunk. To us-- an enormous visual change in our life! To the squirrel -- same old friendly trunk!
While our little world is dramatically changed forever, his little world is exactly the same. Is it straining the metaphor too much to suggest there are those times when mighty changes go totally unnoticed by those of us living within the changes themself? Like a society that gets up every morning and lives the world just the way it comes to them, without consciously sensing it's now coming to them in startling new ways. Taken-for-granteds like jets, satellites, shuttles, Internets, IPhones, Twitters, medicines, clones. foods, music, religions, philosophies and entire civilizational movements.
When we live like a squirrel -- when we take our tree for granted -- it's not always possible to realize what just happened last night. If it looks like a tree,smells like a tree and feels like a tree, then ca-ching I guess it's gotta be a tree! If instead we stand back like a neighbor -- we get to see the full picture. And the full consequences.
Careful here -- are we the squirrel or the neighbor?
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Makes sense to me. I wonder how my squirrels will react?
ReplyDeleteI think everyone is the squirrel and the neighbor...but at different times...depending on what is happening in their life.
ReplyDeleteSo when you ask:
"Is it straining the metaphor too much to suggest there are those times when mighty changes go totally unnoticed by those of us living within the changes themself?"
I say no you aren't straining the metaphor at all. I think different people just react differently depending on their particular circumstances.
(i.e. it's a beautiful sunny day to the outside world but just up the street is a funeral home filled with people whose lives will have been forever changed for the loss they are grieving...yet life goes on outside the funeral home for all others..enjoying the sunny day)
First of all, did the tree really come crashing down?
ReplyDeleteThe same world is seen so differently depending on who's looking. How interesting! How wonderful!
Some provocative comments above. Some thoughts below >>
ReplyDelete* Your squirrels would probably react the same way as ours did. I mean, how many people or squirrels see the whole picture?
* You're right, different things are going on in everyone's world that day. But then I wonder about THE WORLD. The larger world beyond our own particular worlds. The world historians end up writing about. Wouldn't it be great if we could see what THEY see?
* Oh yes the tree really fell! Big and loud at 11:30 at night. When you speak of how "interesting & wonderful" all this can be, what's particularly interesting and amazing is how the next morning the entire tree had been cut and carried away. Without a sign of it ever having been here. Hmmmm?