Moved
Being moved is a central metaphor for personal transformation. People are emotionally moved by beautiful artwork, inspiring speeches or tiny glimpses of grace that glimmer, briefly. This refers, of course, to some mysterious sense of awe and wonder that shakes within us, stirring up dusts of curiosity and tempered reverence that settle silently on our souls.
During these fleeting moments our souls move, and thus, we are moved.
People can also move physically to create physical transformation — we lift weights, practice yoga and train for marathons, hoping to transform our bodies, paving the way, perhaps, for internal conversions that reach further than outward masks. People also move, uprooting themselves from one place, transporting their possessions to a new place where a complex environment will work on them like clay spinning on a stand.
Oddly, being moved is also a central metaphor for metaphor itself — a sort of meta-metaphor that breathes life into the conceptual devices and symbols that move us from one place to another, allowing us to bridge impassable gaps of the mind and heart.
Movement, then, is a metaphor, and a prescriptive action, for closing the gaps in our lives where sadness, despair and confusion settle like sand in a barren desert.
Luckily, we can direct this process through our own movement and by exposing ourselves to situations that can move us.
Move!
Very nice, Brian.
Biologically, one definition of “death” is “no protein motion in the body.” Once our proteins stop vibrating, stop moving, we no longer function as living biological systems. Thus, one definition of “life” is “protein motion in the body.” When proteins move, when they vibrate, we are ‘living’ as biological systems: we are ‘alive’. By extension, then, movement is central to life in all its entirety, so movement as a meta-metaphor seems quite apt to me.
Cheers,
Brent
epistemocrat
September 27, 2010 at 8:38 pm