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Holding 2021: How metaphor helps structure our experience of time
At the start of a new year, we’ve moved out of the metaphorical “container” of 2020 and into the new container of 2021.
In Metaphors We Live By, authors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore how we structure our experience metaphorically. We experience something in terms of something else. A concept may be experienced in terms of something concrete, something that exists in the physical world. And one of the metaphors we use is that of a container.
Contained in space and time
The metaphor of a container can structure both our experience of space (I’m IN a room), and of time.
So a calendar year may be experienced as a container. And the transition from one year to the next feels significant for us because we’re moving into another chunky temporal container. Even though at one level, 1 January is just another day. A day tends to feel less significant as a container, because there are many more of them.
Similarly, a month may be experienced as significant. Initiatives such as Veganuary or Dry January feel achievable because they’re contained. We may feel we can do without cheese or wine for a month even if we’re not sure we can commit to these practices indefinitely.
