I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnsen argue that not only do we communicate in metaphors, but our thought is structured by metaphors. For example, when we talk about or think about arguing, it is often framed as a battle. You defend your position. Your ideas or statements come under attack. She demolished his argument. And so forth.
I have often thought that many aspects of my life should be like a reservoir: like a structure built to collect and hold all the things I need. That might be relationships, or money, or my material convoy (which is itself another metaphor).
metaphors for savings
One of the primary metaphors people use for money is nest egg. It’s kind of weird because a nest egg is offspring you are incubating. Once it hatches, that little birdie has its own life to lead. Maybe it will provide for you in your old age, but no guarantees. It’s not stored-up food for you to eat later.
But actually “nest egg” had a very specifie meaning when it developed: an egg, sometimes real and sometimes a dummy, left in a hen’s nest to encourage her to lay more eggs. So on that logic, a financial nest egg was a small beginning that was intended to attract or generate further accumulation. It would not mean your entire accumulated fortune.
The idea of a “reservoir” is probably a better overall metaphor for monetary savings: a human (you) is responsible for constructing it in such a way that your river of money (your income) at least partially flows into it and is dammed up for later use.
Still, I like a river metaphor better
But thinking of relationships, money, and the stuff of the material convoy as though it is flowing past on a river brings more acceptance and peace. A Buddhist teacher I’ve followed suggests, in meditation, visualizing your thoughts as leaves on a river as you sit watching. Each leaf (thought) arrives in your field of vision, floats around on the river in front of you, and gradually, on its own, exits. Relationships, money, and material stuff does this too.
Sometimes things come back to you after leaving, often in different form, unlike a leaf floating down a river. If you have been a lifelong dog owner, you will have experienced this. You get a dog, perhaps as a puppy. You love them and accompany them through their lives, as they love and accompany you. They become a fixture of your family. They calm down in middle age, and slow down as seniors. Finally, it comes time for them to leave, however it happens.
Once your dog is gone, you are, for some time, without that dog’s love and attention and accompaniment. But later, you will probably get another dog.
The things a dog gives you cannot be dammed up, at least not forever. The dog floats in like a leaf on a river, and floats out, leaving you bereft.
This experience is more like the ocean rolling in and out, with high tide and low tide. At low tide, you see all the shells, and breathing holes for the buried mollusks under the sand. Seaweed and horseshoe crabs might have been stranded for now. Later, the tide comes back in. It can bring you what you had before, or something like it.
Metaphors highlight and hide
None of these metaphors work perfectly. And that’s always the case with metaphorical thinking and communication. A metaphor highlights certain aspects of a situation while hiding others. Being aware of what metaphor you’re operating under can be useful for making your thinking and actions more flexible.
setting down ambition redux
Last week, I said I felt lacking in purpose, and that I was going to start a new project to address this. And then, as I tried to get going on such a project, I faltered.
I am wondering if the outcome of this 1000-day blogging effort will be that I finally put down any attempt at ambition and achievement. In that post on Day 92 (September 5, 2025, about a year ago), I wrote:
I’ve been wondering lately what it might look like if I set down my ambitions. What if I lived in joy and creativity without thinking about where it all might end up? What if I didn’t keep saying, to myself and here on this blog, I’m going to do X.
And later I continued:
I sense in my own life and maybe that of other people’s a new flavor or fragrance in the wind: a wish to live more simply and frugally, a desire to get off social media entirely, an urge to give up the activities I’ve been doing just in case they pay off with a job or important networking contacts for the future.
I think I could be living at low tide right now. The ocean of my life has retreated, leaving a landscape of still-damp sand, of shells and seaweed, of some tiny airholes for little possibilities beneath. I see waves in action, but far away.
Or is this more like drought?
I then wrote:
Is the good life really achieved by earning more money, spending it, and, in the process, achieving minor or major recognition from other people?
What is the good life anyway? Am I living a good life?
This week
Another week of retirement living: walking the dogs (maybe only one), managing my investments, swimming or working out at the gym, blogging here, occasional socializing. Gardening, housecleaning, reading. Maybe making some art. Decluttering and downsizing.
Waiting for the tide to come back in.