January 11, 2014

All of Life is a Metaphor, Metaphorically Speaking

In recent times, I've taken to saying (half-jokingly), after everything that happens or is said,  "Well it’s a metaphor."  

From Joseph Campbell.  (Yes, yes.  I know he's been a source of much posting lately; but I'm reading The Power of Myth and I've been quite taken with the breadth and depth of his thoughts on so many topics.)

“A metaphor is an image that suggests something else...The reference of metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing.  If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu . . . [to misread a metaphor is] reading the words in terms of prose instead of poetry, reading the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation.”

Who are we?  Where are we?  What are we experiencing and why?  

Maybe everything in life is - or should in part be understood as - a metaphor.

Thoughts developing...

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