Thinking Beyond the Oval

.
We will talk a lot about metaphor in the class.  I think of a metaphor as a simple skin that we wrap around a complex idea.  Ideally it keeps the complexity of the idea intact but the simple skin lets the audience recognize it.

A colleague of mine was, however, fond of pointing out the danger of what he called "getting stuck to the metaphor."  Essentially you fall in love with the metaphor and you mush the internal idea around until it fills out the skin.  Say your complex idea has six main points, but you have fallen in love with the idea of an octopus as the metaphor.  You've designed a logo and everything.  So you beat up the idea trying to find content to stuff into all eight legs of the octopus.  You are stuck to the metaphor.  You run the risk of bruising the idea beyond recognition.

Habits are, in some ways, behavioral metaphors.  They are routines that we wrap around the complexity of our lives.  Imagine having to think about how you drive a car - step by step.  Horrible, not?  Habit rescues us.

But we can get stuck to that metaphor as well.  To counteract my inclination to cook and eat everything I see on the Food Network, I try to walk for a couple of hours everyday.  It also gets me away from the computer.  I walk around the golf course across the street.  Part of my route describes an oval around a couple of holes - out and around and back.  One side in shade, the other in sun.  It wasn't until the temperature hit triple digits that I realized that I could walk the shady side of the oval twice, avoiding sunstroke.  You just turn walk the shady side, turn around and walk back.  Why do we think we need to complete the circle?  It's habit.  It is getting stuck to a behavioral metaphor.
.