Identities, Meaning and Metaphor

Yes, it's that time again, time for me to bore my reader(s) to death with my homework. Here is my latest paper for Interpersonal Communications. Enjoy!

When it comes to writing papers, I am a landmine…pressure prompted. I lay around for days until time and guilt force the ideas to explode. My words, the shrapnel of exploding ideas, radiate out from this once silent and dormant page ultimately coming to rest lodged in your mind. Once the dust settles and the ringing in your ears subsides, I hope to have left you with an indelible impression as to the power metaphor possesses.

Metaphor plays a multi-faceted role in communications; it serves to illuminate conversations, provides concreteness within a world of symbols and abstraction and speaks to our own identities. I will use Gottman’s discussion of metaphors in Putting Feelings into Words to help focus on some of the ideas touched on in Constructing Identities as well as many of the concepts contained within Meaning and Values. My hope is to examine how metaphors give voice to our identities and how they can help us to explore complex and abstract ideas.

On page 67 of the text, the authors of Constructing Identities define identities and how they are created. The authors believe that identities are primarily social constructs that are created via our interactions and communications with the world around us. And since the world around us is varied and complex, our identities are made up of a multitude of roles which we utilize based on the situation at hand. I find these definitions regarding identities to be particularly cogent.

Lately I have been out of sorts. My mind quickly wanders. I find it hard to pay attention for any length of time. It’s not that I am distracted by anything. In fact, it’s just the opposite, I am distracted by nothing. I am distracted not by a specific problem or question but rather with a big amorphous question - really more of a sense of foreboding. I am coming to realize that part of what I have been struggling with is tied up with the notion of identity. Within the last 10 years I have gone from being a single college student with no job and little responsibility to a husband and a father with a real world career and real world responsibilities. In light of these changes I find that I am struggling to cope with who I am.

Constructing Identities has caused me to think about how some of our roles are ascribed and others are avowed. Yes, I have ascribed identities: father, husband, student, employee, etc. I also have avowed identities: light-hearted, kind, funny, peacemaker, liberal. And, yes, I take on different roles based on societal context, but somewhere within all of this noise is me. I am finding that the use of a metaphor to help me sort through this confusion and to make sense of my environment is exactly what I needed.

I have come to think of each of the various and changing roles that make up my identity, both ascribed and avowed, as different notes on a musical scale. My father role is a B flat while the husband me is an E. The connection between these roles is simply the movement within the musical scale. All of the roles put together over time become the music that is my identity - sometimes discordant, sometimes melodious, but always me.

According to Gottman, the above metaphor should provide you, the reader, with a glimpse into my reality (p. 265). For example, you may read the above musical metaphor and infer that my relationship with my identity is a complex one rich with tones and rhythm. Or, perhaps you may think I have a background in musical theory, or that I am a self-absorbed elitist with so much extra time on his hands that he can go around daydreaming that his life is a musical composition. Any or all of these interpretations could be correct. This imprecision is the largest weaknesses of metaphorical language – it is subject to the same encoding and decoding process that all communication undergoes. It, too, is prone to miscommunication and misunderstanding. Metaphors are incubators of ambiguity and, like incubators, they help things grow. The incubator does not care if what is growing is the virus of misunderstanding or the little baby chick of empathy and understanding.

Despite the limitation of metaphors, however, they remain immeasurably valuable for interpersonal communications. By grounding my abstract thoughts and ideas about my personal roles and identities into more concrete symbols, musical notation, the person at the receiving end of that metaphor is now better able to probe deeper into my identity. They could expand upon the metaphor to include their own identity, perhaps my sheet music is written for the violin and they could be the cello. The power of the metaphor arises out of the same thing that makes it weak: it is open to interpretation.

This sharing of abstract thoughts and emotions via a set of shared common symbols, although fraught with the risk of misinterpretation, can be the basis for linking together individuals who may share vastly different views. I would argue that metaphor is, if not the only tool available, the best tool for exploring some of the deeper questions asked within the Meaning and Values essay, beginning on page 85 in the text. Paradoxically the mechanism that makes metaphor so valuable for an infant trying to make sense of her world as she begins life is the same mechanism that we use to help navigate complex discussions about what may take place beyond our temporal existence.

The Meaning and Values essay picks up where the Constructing Identities essay leaves off. Constructing Identities shows how identities are socially constructed while Meaning and Values speaks to how we assign, or should attempt to assign, meaning and value to these identities. Indeed, the latter essay argues that identity without some level of self reflection is an empty existence and one that has become all too common in today’s superficial, materialistic society.

Perhaps my recent distraction is not merely an identity crisis but rather a crisis of meaning. Again, I find it helpful to utilize metaphor to help me communicate in more depth. For quite some time now, I have thought about life as a river. The metaphor of river and life is a powerful one for me. The power of this metaphor lies in its flexibility of meaning and ability to adapt and absorb changes and abstractions that I encounter in my life.

Say, for instance, I am experiencing the loss of a loved one. I use the metaphorical image of the river in my mind to adapt to this situation and suddenly the river becomes a shallow creek slowly meandering through a parched landscape. If, however, my life is hectic and confusing the river becomes a torrent of white water and rapids. Or I can even expand the meaning of the river to include not just my life but the lives of those around me. I may be but a drop of water tumbling with the countless other drops contained between the banks of life and heading towards the unknown.

This mental metaphor is one I share with those who ask, but primarily it serves as my internal touchstone. It acts as a real and concrete example that I can hang the day’s abstractions on. Just the thought of it envelopes me in a sense of calm, a sense that my life is complex yet grounded in the real. It brings me the freedom to accept change knowing that I have a mental paradigm that will contract and expand as I need it to.

I find that it is invaluable to have a solid metaphor when facing large or abstract ideas. Religion is rife with metaphors, lambs and doves and apples just for starters. Why is this? Why is it that we lean so heavily on metaphor when we explore the big questions in life? Who am I? Why am I here? A list of similar questions is found in the Meanings and Values essay. The purpose of this paper is not to answer any of the questions in the book but rather to suggest that metaphor is a tool that can be used to begin to explore these questions.

Metaphor can help frame big philosophical questions making them not only easier to understand but also opening up the door to deeper meaning. For example, if I ask myself how God fits into my life, it is helpful for me to frame this question with my river metaphor. I can view my life as the stream and the movement of the stream represents the passage of time. With a little imagination and the freedom which metaphorical thinking allows I can see my entire life from beginning to end traveling down only a section of the river and I can place God into my framework as a variety of things, from the river bed to the water itself or the air or all of the above. The point is that I can use metaphor to begin to explore thoughts and feelings that are difficult to logically order and analyze.

I hope I have demonstrated that the themes of identity and meaning discussed within Chapter Two of the text are often best examined in depth with the aid of metaphor as a tool. The dust has begun to settle now and the ringing in your ears is beginning to fade. All that is left of me as a landmine are my shrapnel words and the residue of meaning scattered amongst them.