Many ways exist to communicate an idea in writing, healthcare, and religion; the most potent is the metaphor, which too many fail to value.

Metaphors provide a type of communication that I call unconscious and highly beneficial. Three areas where metaphors are used extensively and where we could benefit from their use are writing, healthcare, and religion. That sounds like an unusual trio, but these areas are most receptive to metaphoric writing and can provide messages with meaning and power beyond what we would normally do.

One thing to remember, however, is that metaphors can be useful in several ways but can also be confounding. The key is understanding between the parties, which is the challenge of metaphors.

The mechanics of the metaphor are pretty simple. A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly connects two things that are not the same. This is used to bring ideas to life, make them more interesting, or explain them better. Someone once said, “Life is a roller coaster,” meaning that life's ups and downs are like the thrills or unexpected fluctuations of an amusement park ride. That sounds reasonable and is a suitable metaphor for life.

You can use metaphors to:

1. Make complicated ideas clearer
   2. Make your work or speech more emotional
   3. Make pictures that the reader will remember.

Healthcare and Metaphors

Simply put, it's a way of being creative to get your message across and stamp it in not only someone's understanding but also their memory. Understanding biology and metaphors are equally important in healthcare. Failure to convey the idea adequately in a way that the patient can easily understand leads to complications in the interaction and future involvement in care.

Unconsciously, parents of children with disabilities may engage in metaphors that do not provide the information needed to access services and enlighten service providers in healthcare. For one project, researchers found 214 metaphors and categorized them.

The metaphors that were put into groups involved parents’ voyages; metaphors represented danger, strife, and uncertainty. Carefully, metaphors were also employed to portray unpleasant, humiliating, and hostile encounters.

How can we expect the healthcare providers to understand exactly what the parents were trying to say through this speech form? Unless both parties agree to the language used, then communication does not truly exist between them.

In their analogies, parents discussed their feelings of helplessness and uncertainty and attempted to take charge of their healthcare encounters. The categorizations reveal how parents feel perplexed, distressed, and disempowered by the service delivery system's lack of family-centeredness. Observing and discussing parents' metaphors fosters understanding and partnership between service providers and parents.

Metaphor is crucial when referring to patients with illnesses requiring long-term care. Encouraging patients and caregivers to communicate about their disease using their language is critical. This helps foster a shared understanding of the illness and its impact on their lives and enables person-centered care. Studies examining how patients talk about their illnesses show metaphors can help us understand their physical and emotional lives. However, researchers often limit these studies to one disease.

Approximately 142 million older people worldwide lack the ability to meet their basic needs independently. Women, people who live alone, and those who are sicker or less well-off are more likely to require long-term care services. Listening to their metaphorical explanations of their needs or their illnesses is vital.

An excellent and highly illustrated article on the topic is available, and I recommend that anyone in healthcare read it. The article is entitled "Metaphors in Healthcare Narratives and Practices: Powers and Pitfalls. "

Religion and Metaphor

Religion is a place where metaphors are often utilized, and believers may spend years analyzing and trying to understand what has been written. One eminent philosopher/physician, Moses Maimonides, wrote a book detailing his understanding of how metaphors could explain many things regarding religious beliefs. The book is "The Guide for the Perplexed” and can be freely downloaded by anyone who wishes to read it.

A quick summary of what Maimonides believed would be:

Physical traits are not literal but symbolic of God’s acts, he said, using terms like “hand” and “face” to describe God. The story of Adam and Eve symbolizes human nature, while Jacob’s Ladder represents levels of understanding.

To “see” God is to have an intellectual understanding of who He is. The divine feelings stand in for the results of our deeds, and the “voice” of God represents our own personal epiphanies. By proposing these readings, Maimonides hoped to bring the Bible into harmony with intellectual thought and promote a more nuanced, less literal reading of the Bible.

Writing and Metaphor

Writers, whether great or pedestrian, all attempt to use metaphor in order to increase the elegance and the understanding of what they are writing. It is a form that can deepen and enrich the reader's experience and, therefore, the connection with the writer, and it also develops an association with specific writers' works. Even on Medium, writers connect, and when they do, people follow them. So, following is a form of agreement and satisfaction with their work.

Most of us know at least one line from Shakespeare: "All the world’s a stage." However, many other writers are famous for incorporating metaphors into their works, including Plato, Emily Dickinson, and others who may be familiar. For example:

The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid near and nearer the sill of the world.— Lord of the Flies, William Golding.

Well, you keep away from her, cause she’s a rattrap if I ever seen one.— Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck.

‘Life,’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’?A Room with a View, E.M. Forster.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage / Can seldom see through his bars of rage / His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing. — I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference. — The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost.

For me, I am still rolling around the words of "The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens. Of course, there's also Richard Brautigan's “Revenge of the Lawn.” But I digress.

Opening up your communication, your thinking, and your writing to the inclusion of metaphors may be a bit uncomfortable initially, but you will gain facility as you use it. It's the same struggle you would have if you were to start learning a second language. But we know how important that is to brain development and cognitive ability retention. Metaphors may be another tool to keep your brain tuned up.