On my day-to-day calendar at work there are daily proverbs and sayings. Little pearls of wisdom to put you in the right frame of mind to once again enjoy mounting the corporate treadmill. Today's is:
"People's minds are like parachutes. To function properly they must first be open."
When I read that I thought, what a strange thing to do, to compare the human mind to a parachute. The saying only barely hangs together - if it were a parachute, you'd bin it immediately - the only reason it works at all is because the word "open" is a word you can use to describe both a mind and a parachute. Furthermore, your mind doesn't have to be open to work. I know plenty of minds out there that continue to function despite being locked up tighter than the CIA's files on Kennedy.
I began to wonder what other sayings we might create by comparing human things to inanimate objects and vice versa. If you'll indulge me, these are some of the ones I came up with:
"The human leg is like your favourite movie - you keep seeing it even though you know how it ends."
"A drunk with a lisp is much like an orange - always a little pithy."
"The human mind is like porridge, because that's how it looks when it falls out of your head."
All of the above aside, I do quite like the everyday sayings - the real ones, not the ones I made up, although they're good for a chuckle - because at my core I am a poetic being who loves a bit of romance. I believe that such things allow us to see a different world uncluttered by pettiness and agression.
When I read that I thought, what a strange thing to do, to compare the human mind to a parachute. The saying only barely hangs together - if it were a parachute, you'd bin it immediately - the only reason it works at all is because the word "open" is a word you can use to describe both a mind and a parachute. Furthermore, your mind doesn't have to be open to work. I know plenty of minds out there that continue to function despite being locked up tighter than the CIA's files on Kennedy.
I began to wonder what other sayings we might create by comparing human things to inanimate objects and vice versa. If you'll indulge me, these are some of the ones I came up with:
"The human leg is like your favourite movie - you keep seeing it even though you know how it ends."
"A drunk with a lisp is much like an orange - always a little pithy."
"The human mind is like porridge, because that's how it looks when it falls out of your head."
All of the above aside, I do quite like the everyday sayings - the real ones, not the ones I made up, although they're good for a chuckle - because at my core I am a poetic being who loves a bit of romance. I believe that such things allow us to see a different world uncluttered by pettiness and agression.
No comments:
Post a Comment