Stormy Metaphors and Beginning Again

I read recently that metaphors are good but you can’t push them too hard, can’t take them literally, or they begin to break down.

I once had a therapist say, with what I construed as disdain, “you use a lot of metaphor when you speak, don’t you?” He was a substance abuse therapist, very cut and dried, but with a wicked sense of humor. I liked the guy a lot but I always felt a bit sorry for him that he couldn’t seem to enjoy the beauty of a good metaphor.

Anyway, I came to realize not long ago that I could not, should not, hold myself responsible for damages done by various storms in my life. I cannot be held responsible for what I did not know when the winds began to blow.

My responsibility after the storm is to assess the damage, to figure out the best ways to recover and work to protect myself better in the future, not to beat myself up because I got caught in a storm.

(Well, I guess there is a whole 'nother direction this could go, if I just foolishly ran into the storm seeking a thrill. But I digress. That's not at all what I did. That's not what I have held against myself for years and years.)

It’s not my fault the storm hit me. Storms hit us all. It is not indicative of a character flaw to be hit by a storm.

I've heaped so much blame (and shame) on myself (and also allowed others to pile it on me). I'd love to stop that now and learn to tell myself in the kindest way possible to begin again.

See? I suspect my metaphor is beginning to break down (or perhaps I've wandered a bit and lost my way with it, not noticing that the wind was beginning to pick up).

But still, life is often a series of storms and falls where we lose our balance (or we are blown off balance, you know, by the storm) and it takes a while to get back up.

I really do know how to spell, but it was late one night when I was working on this "wisdom card." I was engrossed in trying to write legibly with the correction pen. Almost as soon as I wrote the extra "c" I realized I'd made a mistake. I made a mistake on a quote about beginning again with a tool that is supposed to correct mistakes!