Going Real High and Diving Real Deep.

Metaphor and analogy are vital methods to create mental growth. They sometimes use examples of pre-existing knowledge and experience and overlap it onto another area. Sometimes they give a picture to explore. There are many other approaches to these literary devices and their use. They are flexible tools that have limitations and disadvantages, like any tool they need to be used well, not just stuck to regardless or incorrectly. A modern method commonly used is to write every part or detail especially to prove to someone managing or judging you. So the flaw here is ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. This highlights the limitation of words as well as showing the advantages of pictures. Advanced topics or elements would require more words than anyone has sufficient concentration to use on a practical basis. Good metaphors used well can be exponentially more effective in developing understanding and illustrating perspective.

Metaphors of mountains and oceans have been used for longer than writing. Here I want to start off with these two and look a little into them.

So picture a mountain out of the plain that towers over all around. It has a base of trees and vegetation then an increasingly barer area getting higher to only rocks and cliffs. It is snow capped. For human achievement whether an individual skill or activity or more complex area, this is the mountain metaphor. At the lower levels in the trees there are the most people, with lower level skills. If you are there you may catch glimpses through the trees higher up the mountain and see the backsides of people who have gained more skill and experience, although you might not recognise this. Some may be waving encouragement or holding ropes to help you up. Not everyone can see this above just dismissing them as noise or not looking in the right direction. If you grab the right rope it can help you out of the trees and you can look below and see the majority who are amongst the trees. If you grab the wrong rope it can break or somehow lead through trees but not up the mountain and out of the trees.

If you have got into the more open area you may choose to be happy at your achievement and picnic or try to pass ropes to those in the trees below. Some may walk sideways around the mountain and others will jump for joy and slip back into the trees. Now to climb further requires slightly different skills. In the distance you may see people in the snow you may also copy some of their methods, but ice climbing is different again requiring different skills and equipment and much more experience. To get up this high needs the help of others, hard work and luck.

Now I could go on but already you can see that the mountain is a comparison to development in a path to higher levels. So for instance a sport. Most people have an idea and can do some things, but to be competitive at the beginner level that can take you to the middle level of genuine progression and on to high level can be compared to climbing a mountain there are rope bearers perhaps teachers that can help you up, some may even have a fixed rope system that can get you all the way to the snow. If you have only been in the trees you can only guess what the higher levels are like and others can mislead you with broken ropes (for money?). You may just look down and not notice above, or start teaching what you think you know straight away.

Once you have climbed out of the trees you have abilities to climb. Can you translate that to climbing further or even other mountains? Be careful of rock slides and broken ropes that send you crashing back down. Be careful of thinking the ones at the top climbed up well and are not just about to come crashing down. Many ideas can be described through the mountain idea as metaphor or analogy.

As well as the heights there are the depths. Again there are levels and most people are just in the shallows or in rock pools by the side. You need tools that help you go deeper and keep you safe and you have to get away from distractions. Some people are dragged down by the currents or by other beings.

Here the first level involves getting into the water becoming aware of the surface level, learning to swim. Some people do not even get their face wet, others dive in fearlessly close to the edge (tome-stoning) with substances in their system. The ancient methods of the people of Polynesia apprentice by lying in the ocean looking at the stars and drifting feeling the currents and using the stars to help know how to travel along the oceans and where they are at any one time. Other people dive deep for pearls or deeper to see strange creatures and unknown dangers.

Another depths approach is deeper into an onion through layers to get to deeper layers underneath.

So the trick is not to think I need mental health support (true or not). It is to reflect on the idea and try to see what it could mean, what lessons can be learnt how else can you use these ideas. Of course also when are they not useful and misleading. Learn from maths so you compare like with like not incomparable ideas. There can be never ending depths and also lessons on climbing or journeying from one area that is easy to understand and the lessons applied to other areas. Perhaps we all climb but it is a different mountain for all of us and the depths of our oceans have different monsters in. Some of us can climb a lot on our own, others need ropes to see above the trees. Just imagine, play and see what happens.