Blog #8
Meta-phore: to
carry beyond.
After writing my paper I’ve come to
believe that myth/story/symbolic language is absolutely essential to living a
meaning-filled life. We need a creative symbol to find meaning. Scientific or
objective truth—the “facts”—give us just that, objective meaning; symbolic
truth gives us personal meaning in a way that rational understanding cannot.
Pretty much any experience cannot
be communicated truthfully by mere facts. Sure, they give us some indicators of
the experience:
·
The man and woman leaned towards one another and
their lips touched
·
He was about to move to London for a year.
·
Emotionally speaking, he felt sad.
But they don’t do the reality of the situation justice!:
It was like his being
would be torn in two,
As he prepared to
divide himself from the woman he loved,
with 3,000 vast miles
of ocean,
he drew near to her
one last time, before the gulf:
a kiss.
I
wonder what that was like for her! Maybe next time we’ll know.
The
point is, anybody who’s experienced that, or experienced spring after a long
winter, or giving birth to a child (all of which are symbols, by the way!) knows that the poetic word is the only
one fit to carry the weight of the experience.
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