The Year 2011 is over, and Year 2012 has begun.
If you have read any of my previous postings, THANK YOU. I really do appreciate the time and effort you have spared from all the important things that you could be doing to read about the things that are dear and close to me. I pray that you will find a nugget now and then that you can use that in some small way will repay you for your time and effort.
If you are new to my posts, please allow me three paragraphs to let you know what you will find in my posts. The three things that I hold closest to my heart are my belief in God, my wife and family, and the enterprise of education. Since a traumatic brain incident (TBI) in March 2009 and several follow-up events, I have found myself facing a taxing mental battle, in addition to living daily with aphasia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s. After spending my entire adult life training, thinking and writing in an analytic, sequential and deductive world, I found that I was now exiled to the land of metaphors.
Living and thinking in terms of metaphors was a shock to someone who was brought up in and agreed with the teachings of John Locke when he said, “Metaphors are the worst abuse of language ever invented and need to be annihilated and expunged from our usage.” As I have now studied metaphors, I have come to a very different conclusion than Locke. Learning theorists and brain scientists have found that we learn something new by tying it to something we already know, something that is already in our heads. This is precisely what a metaphor is. Thus metaphors were a way of thinking long before they were a way with words. Therefore I, the new feeble Don Quixote, am riding off on a pathetic horse on a new quest to restore metaphors to the high esteem with which Aristotle viewed them, when he said that the proper use of metaphors was the highest form of genius.
Returning to my New Year’s Greeting, as I wrote “the year 2011 is over and 2012 has begun”, I was reminded (metaphor attack) of two similar statements. The first is from Jean Valjean’s soliloquy in “Les Miserable,” when he steals the bishop’s silver and decides to skip out on his parole. He throws up his hands and says: “No more is Jean Valjean! Another story must begin! I must escape my life of sin.” I find it ironic that he is planning this escape financed by stolen silver. From scriptures, we know that the only way to escape a life of sin is through Christ. Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:17 (KJV) “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”
Welcome to my world. The title “By’s Musings” comes from my Nick Name “By.” Although my first name is spelled “Bayard,” it is pronounced “By’-ard.” Please call me “By.” All my friends do. Settle yourself down in your favorite easy chair, have a hot cup of real coffee (I wish I could, but the closest thing to real coffee that I am currently permitted to drink is decaf) and let’s talk, friend-to-friend.
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