Metaphors-They Are Everywhere!!

I’ve been thinking recently about how it is that metaphor has become so central to my thinking.  I see metaphor everywhere. I see metaphor when I read. I use metaphor when I teach. I see metaphor hidden in the flow of conversation that washes over me every day.  I see metaphor when science wishes to explain itself. I see metaphor as the language God uses to speak to us when we don’t understand his math. If there is such a thing as the soul then it is the soul that resonates in the presence of metaphor. Metaphor is the still small voice.

When I returned to graduate school after having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for ten years, my intention was to pick up on my studies in developmental biology; not to study metaphor. Like most everyone else, I got the idea of metaphor; two disparate domains that intersect to create new and symbolicly meaningful connections, the road is a snake, the man is a bulldozer, the atom is an onion. Sales brochures are drenched in metaphor; such and such a drug declares open war on bacteria, this or that drug attacks viruses, something or another oral mediation seeks out and targets mucus.

I recall that the company I worked for had developed a very effective antibiotic, Amikin (™ Bristol-Squibb), which was particularly useful in compromised patients whose infections had become drug resistant to antibiotics that had been around of awhile.

After having extolled the advantages of using an antibiotic that can work against drug-resistant bacteria I would end my presentation, When the Others Can’t, AMI KIN, which every now and then would get a rise.  I made little business cards that said, When the Others Can’t, AMI KIN . I handed out pencils embossed with When the Others can’t, ‘ AMI KIN . I even invested in a license plate, AMI KIN, which was eventually lifted by someone who perhaps thought it was cute; maybe it was the competition.

I’m not sure I can argue that this little turn of phrase is metaphoric; an intersection between the domain of broad spectrum’ antibiotics with the domain of the can do spirit?  But I can tell you that When the Others Can’t AMI KIN resonated with some of the doctors. I really don’t think this little word play ever translated into increased sales. Can you imagine a patient asking her doctor why her mediationwas being changed and the doctor saying, “When the others can’t AMI KIN?”

That said, I do recall giving myself a pat on the back for coming up with the idea.

As for having encountered life-changing metaphors that end up impacting my life’s journey by forcing a change in direction, I vivedly recall a metaphoric detour sign.  I’m not talking about the ‘cute’ metaphors, the road is a snake or the Yankees are red hot this year – I’m talking about journey-making/changing intercepts between two categorically different domains.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

…I was, sitting on a folding chair in a small rented-out room of an Albuquerque strip mall listening to someone trying to explain the Omega-Point.