Human Metaphors
People as gemstones, characters, machines, architecture, gods. People as growing things.
“I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?”
― John Green, Paper Towns
I used to think of people as gemstones.
Some were rough and some were polished, some highly prized and sought-after and others sold on late-night infomercials with names like ‘Tanzanite’.
They could be diamonds or rhinestones or rubies or quartz, colors changing with atomic impurities in their crystalline structure.
People-as-gemstones had facets. They weren’t the same from every angle. Who a person was with their family and who they were with their friends weren’t quite the same. They could be a different person at work as they were at home.
I used to think of people as characters.
Some were protagonists. Others were side-characters, love interests, deuteragonists and antagonists.
Most were NPCs, non-player characters. Empty people with scripted responses living scripted lives.
People-as-characters had motivations. The had goals and flaws and secrets and dreams. They fitted neatly into archetypes and outlines, and the endings to their stories were already written, determined by their nature as surely as trajectory is determined by velocity and gravity and drag.
I used to think of people as machines.
Some were value-adding, taking in raw material and outputting physical or intellectual labor. Others were value-subtracting, consuming food and fuel and energy and outputting nothing of value to anyone.
Machines had functions. They had inputs and outputs. They required maintenance, or they degraded over time.
People-as-machines were part of the greater machine of society, which itself was part of the machine of civilization. All transforming inputs to outputs at different scales and different rates, all knowable, all understandable. All fulfilling their utility functions as best they could.
I used to think of people as architecture.
Some were modern brutalist, without decoration or ornament, fulfilling their functions in grim solitude and with concrete purpose. Others were gothic, neo-classical, art deco, filled with fear and joy and color and style, brimming with personality and standing proud, distinct, tall.
Certain buildings towered over others, gleaming spires of glass and steel that scrape the sky. How did they get so tall? What was it like, to stand alone at the summit?
People-as-architecture had facades but no feelings. Buildings are constructed and torn down, but never cry even as the heart is torn from them in explosive demolition. They banded together in neighborhoods but always, in the end, stood alone.
I used to think of people as gods.
Some were kind and others cruel, all possessed of mysterious power to reshape the world around them. Plenty brought calamity in their wake, while others shone from pedestals, permitting admiration but no intimacy. All acted according to their whims, regardless of the principles they claimed to stand for.
They created the world around them, but there was no plan, no order, just conflict and compromise and symbolism and myth. A world of meaning and confusion, of sacred and profane and the thin lines between them.
People-as-gods were not omnipotent. They were not omniscient or omnibenevolent. They were the myth of creation given form, not perfection held aloft as worship. A pantheon, divisible and divided, wrought in constant theogony and blemished divinity.
I think of people now as growing things.
We’re born with tendencies and potentials written into us in double-helix form, planted in the soil of our society and fed with the nutrients of our culture.
We grow, weaned and wounded in disparate measure by the actions of our parents and the conditions of our childhood.
Through life we are damaged. Sometimes the cuts remain open, weeping for the rest of our lives as our arms curl protectively around them, and we snarl at anyone attempting to get close enough to touch. Sometimes the cuts scar over and new growth flourishes around them, a flaw in the structure invisible to the eye. Sometimes - sometimes we heal, cuts mend and bruises fade. Sometimes sunlight and cellular repair is enough, and it’s like we were never hurt in the first place. Sometimes, even though we’ve healed, the wound still aches when it rains, or when we remember what it was like to be whole.
We ripen and we rot; we wax and we wane. Cycles upon cycles, we play out the same stories day after day and year after year. Every once in a while we learn, see the patterns all laid out before us and change them. Growing things can’t always change their nature, but they can choose a new direction to flower in.
People-as-growing-things can be hurt, burdened, stifled, sick. They can grow old and decrepit. They carry with them all their wounds and all their scars, the shapes of them grown ever contorted in fetal comfort around the deepest of their vulnerabilities. But they are also, always, reaching for the aliveness of light and joy and better tomorrows.
No matter the darkness they are mired in, they are always reaching for the sun.