(Thank you for your interesting comments on my first post. Here are a few more of my own: )
Have you ever thought how 'time' is a metaphor? Time is on my side, we hear in a song, but tend to believe something quite different. Time is a substance that is limited. It will run out. Sometimes, we even believe we have too much of it and ‘kill’ it. We squander it or just waste it and feel defeated and frustrated. But what if you think of it as an unfolding eternal process – it is as though a VIP carpet is being stretched out in front of you, isn’t it? Now, we understand the song line, ‘Time is on our side’ – it all seems to be 'working out' wonderfully.
And then there are static or dead metaphors, ones that don’t work anymore. The ideas they incorporate seem to have died, like a representation in a tapestry from a bygone time. The metaphor no longer lives and we cannot live by it. However, what if you just breathe life into it - Look: The ‘Portuguese discoveries’ of yesteryear become an unfolding epic adventure of scientific research – symbolised by Champalimaud building! And miraculously this metaphor lives again...
But there are those amongst us who have lost the courage to realise dreams, to use metaphor to create the life they might dream up, a dream come true. I met a student like that and pleaded with her:
‘If you do nothing, you are at the mercy of everything and everyone!
My very good friend Valerie who understands time and life like no one else – she is 94 – sent the student a wonderful reply, which she quoted by heart:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
(He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by William Butler Yeats)
And so, by treading softly, you will be encouraged to come to understand just how wonderful our visions of the world are and how they may yet 'unravel' at your feet.
'Walk' your talk, I say...
16 comments:
I don't want to be at the mercy of everything and everyone...therefore I've become a manipulator of time and space!! since I am very young and I've only been here for twenty-odd years I definitely feel like time is on my side...and I still have a lot of time to 'kill'... metaphors are everywhere... so that time itself is one...time is a concept we created...and I think that maybe I don't have a lot of time to kill, I actually hate when I'm bursting out in tears and someone tells me "You're young Theresa...You've got a lot of time to rebuilt, repair and remake" cause I do fall on that one.And so I breathe in and breathe out and smile thinking to myself in a foolish way "He's right...I might as well screw everything now and repair later...since I've got a lot of time"... But time is just as certain as a metaphor... I may die tomorrow...I'm never carefull when crossing the street so we never know... But I've got live today...thinking I've got time...just living time in an 'estoicic' and 'epicureanistic' way! Like John Lennon said once 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans...' So I just intend to live...as incoherent and metaphorically as time... "TIME AFTER TIME" =D IANNNNNN
'Timing' is everything or should that be 'being on time'? Well, anyway, when you give yourself time, Theresa, you come up with a metaphor for all time, God! And then you think a bit more and come to understand that Grammar is the means to understanding God. And then you think, Oh, my God Grammar!
So my question for you is: does this mean living 'incoherently and metaphorically'? Or coherently and metaphorically? Nyep or Yow?
So.. There's a great metaphor.. TIME! The truth is time, like anything else, is simultaneously shorting out and expanding.. It's ever so surprising when you wake up and think "Another Day... Another Day" and when you go to bed "I did it. I went through another day". We as humans crave for time but we do nothing of it! Don't we have 24 hours so why do we complain that's not enough or that's way too much?? You go your all life being concerned over time to do this or that.. and when you finally run out of it, when you find out you have so little time with the ones you love.. time's the last thing on your mind! How amazing is that! That when you're out of time you just don't give a damn... You think "I've done the best I could with what I've been given... I've knitted my quilt... I can go silently into that good night". And even if you're upset with the lack of time to do whatever you want you find hilarious enough that you don't have enough time to be upset. Time's not given to you, you're the one that's left to grab time for yourself and for the one's you love. And so Time's forever yours! That no one will or can take from you. Your time is your TIME!
Well, first I would like to say that I don't know anyone else capable of write a post about metaphors... So you can be happy because you're definetely unique... Anyway... What I would like to say is that I think that time is not a metaphor. When we speak about time we are speaking about something quite real, which in fact exists. Time is what controls our life,it is every second that we spend comment on blogs, on English classes and other things more useful than that... Time is real and is as you said running out... But I do agree that there are a lot of metaphors about time. As I said in my blog, on metaphors' post, metaphors are used for example when we're trying not to harm other people's feelings but nevertheless have to say something that will not be pleasant to the person with whom we are speaking. And what is more capable of harming or scaring people than time and the fact that it will run out?! Which metaphor do we use more frequently than metaphor for death? And what means that time is running out? That we are going to die of course... So I think that you don't care so much about metaphors,I think that what you really want to do is to oblige us to think about the fact that time is running out and that we must do something to enjoy it and to make a difference in the short periode of time that God or someone else (Allah or something) has given to us... And I think you succeded... At least I'm thinkg that time is running out, but I must confess I had already thinking about it...
Keep going with your work... It is really surprising...
"I am that which I am and I'm happy about it. Because I am able to focus upon that which I want, I do not suffer the negative emotion because I am wise enough not to focus upon that which brings me discomfort.I am wise enough to understand that in sameness, in conformity is not the diversity that stimulates creativity."
And time!... Time might be what we all could sell, and with that amount we could sell we would be rich... But since time is precious, we'd rather kill it than sell it, and so we're time-killers and not rich!
And theoretically I don't have the time to write this lunatic comment... And since now I noticed that... I'll shut my mouth!
:) Marie
Today I was doing some research on the Internet and I found this quotation... "Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them." by Dion Boucicault... I immediately thought of your blog and on the question of the time. I don't want to say anything more about it.. It is just for you to think about it...
Hi!
Well, another very good post.
I would only like to say that time is something we all should "take care of", or risk dying with so many lost dreams.
"Oh, I need time to think about it." or still "I don't have time for it." Phrases that we all say several times, without even thinking that they are loosing their meaning by being said or though exaggeratedly.
If it is a metaphor... Well, it can be, as we can use it to "compare" or "relate" different perspectives of time in our lives. "Last time I...", "Next time I will..."
Cátia Pereira
"Phrases that we all say several times, without even thinking that they are loosing their meaning by being said or 'thought' exaggeratedly."
Sorry for that error. Maybe there are more, but...
There's a 8-line-poem by Robert Frost called "Nothing Gold Can Stay" that I believe to be a perfect metaphor for "time" and "life".
"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
Life's first "green" is childhood, a period marked by dreams and innocence ("flowers"), in which everything is new and each detail is a new discovery. This is the golden phase of life, which is the most difficult one to maintain since we, inevitably, grow up and become unable to be surprised by those "small" things in life. I would say that's why there are students like the one you mentioned, who don't believe in their dreams and don't have the courage to "breath life into their metaphors". Life has many "dawns", many beautiful and "golden" moments which are not eternal, just like life itself. The way I see it, your metaphor about "time" means that we should face life/time as a tapestry filled with beautiful "dawns", little "golden" which are eternal…as long as they last.
This apparently pessimistic poem ("nothing gold can stay") is actually, in my view, an optimistic message, because it shows us that nothing lasts forever and that time changes everything - therefore, one should make the most of the joy good things bring, enjoy the "dawn" while it lasts and the expectation of the next "dawns", since a permanent "dawn" can't exist, just like the "Eden" can't be a permanent paradise.
Despite all the bad or not so good things in life, despite the fact that time is running out and nothing can "stay gold" forever, we should, paradoxically, try to "stay gold". :)
p.s. Sorry for writing such a long comment, but I just wanted to share this poem.
Well, I liked your post very much Ian, and I think you’re right. Time is in fact, a metaphor. With regard to this matter, I´d just like to mention this Argentinean writer, Julio Cortázar, who has really interesting view of time. In one of his writings he says that when someone offers you a watch for you birthday, they may not know it but they offer you something that´s yours but that it´s not your body, they give you the fear of loosing it, or of letting it fall to the ground and hence, break it; they offer you the tendency to compare it with other watches. They do not offer you a watch, quite on the contrary, you are the one who´s being offered to the watch for its birthday. I truly think this is a very good definition of time. It shows that we are prisoners of time and if we really think about it, our life depends on time and is controlled by it. We have a daily routine, which we follow: we have lunch at a certain hour, we have to catch the bus at a certain hour too, we have to be at work or school at certain hours… we cannot live without a watch. This whole text is a metaphor of time and it just shows how time has become an obsession for the human race.
I’m not sure about what you mean with “time is a metaphor”, so I can’t really say I disagree with you, however, I wouldn’t put it that way. Time is…time. Pure and simple. You can make metaphors with it, but it is not a metaphor in itself. Also, I don’t think I’m running out of time, because I will last as long time lasts! I say this because of the metaphor you used.
Living tapestry…I really liked that one. And what a colourful living tapestry we are. This reminded me of your metaphor on the “Goddess of Knitting”, I believe that was what you called it. Each and every one of us is sowing tapestry, but not just one. At the same time as we sow our own tapestry, we also interfere with the sowing of other people. Everybody intertwines their thread with other people’s tapestries and this is why we are so colourful. And this is why we are eternal. This was a lesson I was taught by a stone. A tiny little stone. Well, of course I had an idea about it before, but the stone really cleared it up for me.
As I was going to the university, there was a man in front of me who stopped in the middle of the street to kick a stone to the side. “This will prevent it from doing any harm, I guess”, I thought to myself. But then I realized that, even if the man had good intentions and he did what any of us would do, it was possible that the stone might be harmless where it was (even though it looked more “menacing” there) and the man triggered a chain of events which would lead to somebody’s injury. Well, you might think “well, that is a nonsensical story, what was the point?”. Well, the thing is, one week later, I actually tripped on that same stone. Irony of fate at its best, I’d say!
Anyway, what I mean by this is, and quoting a very nice sentence said in the film “Gladiator” (it has probably been quoted too many times already, but I still like it!), “What you do in life, echoes for eternity”. We are all eternal, and I don’t mean this as in the way that our loved ones remember us or anything about family. What I mean is, we never know when we are influencing someone and, therefore, sowing their tapestry. We never know when our smile might affect a stranger and his interaction with the world, and so on. Thus, we have an impact in the world which we don’t know of, at all, but in this way we live eternally, as invisible but present as a thread in tapestry (it is there, we just can’t find it because we don’t know what it looks like).
Time IS a metaphor. What we do with time is up to us. Our state of mind is always the lure for real happiness and achievement. But if time is really by our side, how should we grab it?
I was suprised with the Champalimaud building, how come nobody thought of that concept before? What a fantastic idea! The building reincarnates the Portuguese voyages to the unknown, in other words both "unknowns" are linked by a living metaphor...
A Metaphor is a powerful vehicle to express our deepest feelings and emotions or even to expose critical social issues that affect us and the way how we live in society. One of the greatest metaphors I can remember is the one that Kafka uses on his book Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis tells the story of Gregor Samsa, a man who works to support his family which is constituted by his sister, his mother and father. But everything changes, when one morning when he wakes up he finds himself transformed into an insect. In the beginning, his concerns are about the strange metamorphosis that he suffered and in the impossibility to fulfill his professional obligations. When confronted with the repulse of his own parents before his situation, Gregor initiates an interior process of mutation that drives him to an obsessive analysis of his familiar and social context. In a first stage Gregor´s sister decides to try and help him, feeding him, when his parents turn their back to him, reducing him to his lonely agony. The climax of this book culminates in the death of Gregor which represents the liberation of his family, and specially him, since he ceases to suffer in silence, in his helplessness and ends up being forgotten. It is with the death of Gregor Samsa that his father leaves his state of apathy, of parasitism and begins to take his life in his own hands, his sister abandons the gloomy loneliness of her bedroom and flourishes to life. The whole family gains a new courage to face life. Kafka explores the metaphor of the absurd of the human condition, he exposes the feelings of exclusion and helplessness that the human being faces in a society which looks to a man merely as a robot, as an automatic being without any real freedom, prisoner of a series of expectations and pressures that his own family and society imposes on him, when he fails to accomplish what is expected of him, he is left out, he is abandoned by everyone. I believe this is still a pertinent issue nowadays. Many writers and musicians have used metaphors to expose the diseases of society or of our government, they appeal to us and they move us to be alert to such problems and encourage us to take action, and bit by bit to build a better world. This is how powerful a metaphor can be.
Yes, Kafka's work is an important landmark for humanity, isn't it?
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