Member-only story
1-Minute Writing Prompt
Using Nature As A Metaphor
A quick, all-in-one exercise for writing, creativity, flow.
You know you are nature, made of the same stuff as…. well, everything else.
“(…)our human genetic code is constructed by the exact same four neculeotides (complex molecules) as every other for of life on the planet. At the level of our DNA, we are related to the birds, reptiles, amphibians, other mammals, and even the plant life.”
— Jill Bolte Taylor in ‘My Stroke of Insight’.
But it’s one thing to know this and quite another to connect with this reality.
How do you do this when even going for a walk in the park or sitting by the river doesn’t necessarily make you feel that connection strongly enough?
This is where this writing prompt comes in.
There is a good definition of ‘metaphor’ in ‘Passages’, a novel by Connie Willis [bold & italics added by me]: ‘A metaphor is a figure of speech that likens two objects,’ says one of the novel’s characters. The other character responds: ‘Wrong, and wrong again. The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we seek to make sense of our surroundings, parallels, and connections. We cannot help it.’
Or, this (3rd) definition on Wordnik: ‘A figure of speech by which, from some supposed resemblance or analogy, a name, an attribute, or an action belonging to or characteristic of one object is assigned to another to which it is not literally applicable; the figurative transfer of a descriptive or affirmative word or phrase from one thing to another; implied comparison by transference of terms: as, the ship spread its wings to the breeze.’
With nature as a metaphor, I’m going a step further, because the likeness is already there. So I disregard the ‘supposed resemblance’ in the definition above. As you already saw from Bolte’s quote at the start of this piece, we’re intimately and literally identified with…
