Home > 26 Ways > #18: Row a Metaphoric Boat

26 Simple Ways to Nurture Your Creative Life

#18: Row a Metaphoric Boat

… in the water, by yourself.

By Chris Dunmire

I love metaphors and the way you can take an idea and parallel its likeness to another in order to understand a concept more fully. Metaphors are like dressing room mirrors in the mind that, with good lighting, reflect back multiple angles of perspective — often ones overlooked — revealing the tucked-away details hidden from a straight-on pose.

Metaphors help develop our minds teach us wisdom in their reflections. We emerge from metaphoric space altered in some way, more discerning and discriminating. Undoubtedly, metaphors help carve out new neural connections in our brains and stimulate creative thinking.

Embedded within our own lives are rich metaphoric nuggets. If you pay attention to the deeper layers of your experiences, you can see metaphors at work all the time. Use them to your advantage to learn more about yourself and grow in discernment. They will enrich your creative life.

Here's an example:

Row, row, row my boat

Recently, while enjoying a low-key day at the beach, I noticed a small shed nearby that rented out canoes, paddle boats and fishing boats by the hour. Rested from a morning bike ride and cooled from a light swim, I wondered what kind of upper-body workout I could get from a vigorous hour in a rowboat. Curious, I rented a small fishing boat for an hour (for $5), strapped on a life jacket, and set out for a solitary skim on the lake.

After getting acquainted with the boating equipment, I got down to business: hard-core rowing across the lake. I made a beeline from shore to shore and soon realized that rowing in a boat was much more fun than rowing on an exercise machine. Real moving scenery is delightful to take in and you appreciate your work much more by seeing your progress in action. Ten minutes ago I was waaaay over there! I smiled at the choppy trail I was cutting through the water behind me before it swirled lightly back to stillness.

After awhile, I began to feel the oar handles rubbing rawly against my palms. So I decided to slow down and coast for awhile. At rest, it was easy to get absorbed in my surroundings: the cool breeze coming off the water... the warm sunshine on my skin... the playful laughs of swimmers at the beach... the smell of seaweed and dead fish. Ewwww!

Then I noticed the sunshine sparkling off the water. Gazing into the watery deep, my mind began to wander. No, let me rephrase that. My right-brain kicked in because I started to wonder: How can I relate this solitary experience into a metaphor that supports my creative life? At that, I pulled in the oars and rested them inside the boat. I was ready to quietly brainstorm.

Suddenly, like a Tony Buzan Mind Map, my thoughts began arranging themselves into symbolic categories and relationships and metaphoric melodies:

Continue to article page 2 »