![]() Yet the image I have of the ball and the rods is more than just the middle way between one rod and the other. As any good Buddhist knows, the best way between these is the middle way. Many dualities can be modeled this way, individuality vs. That was easy to do for a short way, where you could then drop the ball for a low score, but if you learned to put exactly the right amount of pressure on the ball, it was amazing how far it would scoot, all the way to a maximum score. You got a better score if you squeezed the rods after the ball started rolling, pushing the ball uphill. If you did nothing more, the ball would fall off, and you get a terrible score. You had to get the ball going by pulling the rods beneath the ball apart. In my youth there were a number of games based on pushing a metal ball uphill with two rods. Then once I understand the direction I need to go, a metaphor can summarize that, even conflicting metaphors like this poem. I’d rather analyze my life without metaphors at all. Any path can be justified metaphorically, but what metaphor do you really need? Only a wise and experienced observer can tell you. This is one reason that poetry alone is not the best psychotherapy. ![]() Where are you starting from? Are you expressing yourself too much or too little? Are you conforming too much or too little? Are the rules you do follow the good rules or the bad rules? Depending on such things, certain metaphors that express wisdom for others are just going to reinforce behavior that is harming your life. This is something I don’t like about metaphors. He needed to talk more, but he had this story that helped him resist that. So he kept his mouth shut, until he couldn’t, which didn’t go well, but it was far from having dung shoved in his mouth or being carried away by Hades. His greatest misery in life came from not knowing how to talk to my mother. Yet as a metaphor, it wasn’t the right advice for him. I think he liked that at a concrete level, that’s certainly good advice. My dad told a story that ends with the aphorism, “If you’re happy in a dung heap, keep your mouth shut.” He liked that. ![]() Hmmm, I wonder what she thought was the best way, or did this poem come out of her frustration about not knowing a best way? The second part describes how following the rules can make her disappear into conformity. The first part describes how a person will be picked off by some predator if she is too different. It is certainly intentional that the author here presents two ways to a bad ending.
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