Tag Archives: metaphor

Close to the source

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Please visit Kelly Tenkely’s Substack and read, ‘Staying Close to the Source’. She starts with a wonderful metaphor,

“I was the kind of kid who loved to collect rocks. I was especially taken with any rock found in a stream or lake. Those rocks felt different. They seemed uniquely magical, luminous, and glittering just below the surface. Smooth, as if they’d been polished over time, their colors saturated and alive.”

… “Each time we visit a learner-centered school, I’m struck by that same kind of magic.”

I’ve had visitors to Inquiry Hub tell be they could feel this magic. They’ve described that this is a special place. They’ve been struck by the way our students share their learning experiences, and how open they are to articulate both their learning processes and their personal inquiries.

We still have percentage grades in grades 10-12, we are still a BC, Canada school providing our students with a regular diploma that they would get at any other school. But we offer opportunities that most students don’t get. We can’t compete with elective course offerings a big high school can provide, but we can have students design their own elective… but only after 1-2 years of doing shorter, less comprehensive, inquiries with continual reflection and sharing built into the process.

I’m not sure how this compares to the schools Kelly visited, but her post concludes with:

“May we stay closer to the source where learning happens. 

May we teach educators how to notice, how to listen, how to see the glitter. 

May we trust that teachers can sit beside learners and bear witness to their growth, without needing to pull it out of context to prove it exists.

Learning, when you’re close enough to see it, is unmistakable.”

This spoke to me, and reminded me of the special teachers and students I get to work with. I encourage everyone to read Kelly’s full post.

Simplify rather than shrink

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I don’t remember where I heard this, but the concept has been on my mind recently:

Simplify rather than shrink.

The idea is that retirement doesn’t necessarily mean becoming less, but rather doing less. No I won’t be going into work anymore, and the titles and responsibilities will be less, but that doesn’t mean who I am will shrink. It’s way better to perceive the changes as simplifying my life. I’ll be able to wake up later than 5am, I won’t have to rush my morning workout, or race to get my writing done. On the contrary, I can work out for longer and write more.

I don’t have to rush the making of dinner, or choose a meal based on speed of preparation rather than preference. I won’t have to give up the quality and healthiness of a meal for convenience. I can also commit to some projects mid-week rather than waiting for the weekend.

This isn’t a shrinking of what I do, it’s expanding the things I want to do, while also simplifying my life. It’s removing the commitment to a job that can sometimes take 10 hours of my week day and creep into weekends, (if not in workload then at least in mental energy).

This frame of simplifying rather than shrinking is one than I think works for me. It’s a metaphor that allows me to get excited about my upcoming retirement. It allows me to see retirement as a wonderful opportunity to expand the use my time on things that allow me to be more of who I want to be. There will be no shrinking, there will definitely be some simplifying.

Morning sun

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It is better than coffee, stronger than a multivitamin, and more energizing than sleep or a good workout. It is the warm feeling of the early morning sun.

Bathing in light, not yet too hot, which seeps into my body, much deeper than my skin. While it warms me from the outside, it also invigorates me from the inside. I feel a radiance that is not just an absorption of energy but an emergence of it from within.

This is the power of the early morning sun. Caffeine for the soul.

Live a Lifetime in a Day

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I love this metaphor for how to live a meaningful life, “Live a lifetime in a day,” shared by Harvard physician Dr Aditi Nerurkar on The Diary of a CEO podcast. I took the liberty of emphasizing each of the 5 stages for easy reference:

“[w]hat creates a meaningful life… is to live a lifetime in a day.

And so that sounds like this big thing, but all it is, is that when you start your day, think about five things,

five things that you can do in your day to create an arc of a long and meaningful life in one day.

So what does that mean?

Spend a little bit of time in childhood.

So in wonder and play, even if it’s for a few minutes, do something that brings you joy for joy’s sake.

Spend a little bit of time in work.

We all know what that is, and for most of us, it’s a lot of time, but for, you know, it doesn’t have to be paid work, but just something that helps you feel a sense of productivity agency that I can do difficult things and I can overcome.

Spend a few minutes in solitude,

very important for all of the reasons that we’ve talked about today.

Spend some time in community,

so engaging with others, and then

spend some time in retirement or in reflection,

really taking stock of your day. So at the end of the day, when you’re going to bed and you’re putting your head on your pillow, you can say, okay, yes, I lived a meaningful life. I did all of those things.”

~ Dr Aditi Nerurkar on ‘The Diary of a CEO’ with Steven Bartlett: Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!, Feb 15, 2026.

What a beautiful frame to start your day with. Usually I’ve got more reflection to contribute after I share something like this, but I really don’t this morning.

We’d all be a bit more happy, more appreciative of the life we live, if this was our daily goal.

Path to Nowhere

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We all do it.

We choose a path that doesn’t take us where we want to go… a path to nowhere.

Endless scrolling on social media. Binge-watching shows instead of pursuing hobbies. Saying yes to everything and stretching ourselves too thin. Procrastinating on big goals by tackling tiny, irrelevant tasks. Staying in our comfort zones, avoiding new skills that scare us. Skipping exercise or eating junk for quick fixes. Remaining friends with negative people who drain our energy. Buying stuff to feel better, but still feeling empty after our purchases, or buying on impulse because it’s easy, and the items aren’t too expensive.

But the costs are real. The path isn’t forward. These are all paths to nowhere.

Moths to the flame

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Chris Williamson recently shared this quote:

“You pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world.” — Jay Alto

Our fixation is intense. We cling to tiny dopamine hits, scrolling unaware of the world around us. Ironically, what we are doing is dividing our attention into tiny video clips, catchy sound bites, and dancing in an emotional roller coaster between humour and rage, while simultaneously focusing our attention on a single screen.

We are merely moths, our screens are the light to which we fly. Our humanity suspended as we meet some primordial desire in a way that would be considered comical if it wasn’t also sad, if not tragic.

Tragedy Tourism

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I don’t know how widespread the use of this phrase is, but I heard it and to me it is exactly why I struggle to pay attention to the news. The phrase is ‘tragedy tourism’ and it refers to the constant onslaught of tragedy we ‘visit’ viewing current events in the news. The topics vary and change but message is the same:

Share a tragic event, share the outrage, sadness, and horror, briefly examine the details, discuss them, highlight the anger or controversy, and then move on… find a new tragedy and repeat. You don’t get to live too long with any one tragedy, you merely visit and move on.

Your attention can’t stay on any one thing, because the next tragedy is thrust upon you to provoke further outrage, to keep you distracted, triggered. And a mind that is consumed with tragedy is a controlled and manipulated mind. It’s a mind that is angry and distracted from rational thought, it’s a mind that easily forgets the last reason to be outraged because the new reason, the next distraction, fill your consciousness with yet another and another tragedy.

No time for clarity of thought, no time to examine the issues and nuances of the last tragedy you visited, you just move on to the next tragedy because that’s where the news cycle is now. You visit each new tragedy like you are on a vacation bus tour. In the same way that a bus stops to show you a touristy landmark just long enough to learn a few highlights and minor details, and take a picture, the news peppers you with the lowlights, the sadness of the tragedy before putting you back on the metaphorical bus to be dropped off at the next tragedy.

Tragedy tourism keeps you hopping from one tragedy to the next, filling you with new reasons to be angry and upset, but not leaving you long enough on any one tragedy to allow you to feel immersed. The stay at each tragic event too short to care enough to truly understand the tragedy or to meaningfully interact or think critically about it before moving on to the next one.

An angry mind doesn’t think critically. A divided attention doesn’t promote activism or action. A distracted population doesn’t do anything to upset the status quo… and the news pumps out a new tragedy for us to visit.

The moment I’ve been waiting for

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I wanted it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. Last February I wrote ‘Schoolyard rules’ and basically said that unlike in the movies, in the real world the bully usually wins.

I ended that post saying,

“If we want to see the feel good movie ending, it won’t be one hero protagonist saving the day. No it will be the band of brothers all standing up to the schoolyard bully. It will be all the kids in the schoolyard saying, ‘That’s enough!” It will be his own little gang deciding that he’s not worth supporting. It didn’t happen the first time around, maybe it will happen this time… but I’m not betting on it. I’m looking around the school yard and I just don’t see enough kids banding together, and I definitely don’t see enough adult supervision.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at The World Economic Summit in Davos was a call to action, an invite for a band of brothers to take action. The only question now is if we get the movie ending or if the moment is lost in cowardice… and the bully still wins.

I’m hopeful.

Beyond the big stretch

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For a long time I’ve had flexibility issues. Part of it is that I just don’t stretch enough. I’m trying to change that. The thing is, I find stretching very unpleasant. In my mind stretching is closer to pain than discomfort. I think this perspective came from trying to speed up stretching just to get it over with. So instead of slowly pushing to get a better stretch, I just jump to the max I can go and wonder why it’s so uncomfortable.

Then I wonder why I don’t like to stretch.

There’s a metaphor here around getting out of my comfort zone. I see it in things I don’t want to do. At first I might avoid the thing I’m not looking forward to, then once I decide to do it, I’m all in. I go from no stretch to big stretch.

But for physical stretches this is a lousy strategy. The reality is that my body needs time to warm up. I usually do cardio before stretching so that helps, but I’ve got to start changing both my approach and my attitude towards stretching. It’s not about getting to an end point quickly, it’s not just about going all-in. Rather the big stretch comes from countless little stretches. Repeating movements ever so incrementally further.

It sounds simple, but my frame of reference needs to change. My focus needs to be in putting in the time, varying what I do to get the most out of movements, rather than trying to muscle through my stretches. Essentially I have to sit in a place where I’m more comfortable being out of my comfort zone, rather than jumping out of it briefly and in full force. The big stretch isn’t the point, the act of stretching is.

A disturbance in the force

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I’ve been feeling ‘off’ on top of issues getting a good night’s sleep, and that has thrown my schedule out of whack. Compounding this, I just joined a gym and the just over 30 minutes commute time to get there and back has thrown off my morning routine. I already get up at 5am and I’m not pushing this to 4:30 to compensate. So, I need to readjust my schedule. On top of this, I’m just 2 days away from winter vacation so my entire routine is about to get upturned anyway.

So what gives way to this? When there is a major disruption in the smooth running of my routines and habits, what breaks? Well, if I can help it… nothing. No, I won’t skip a day writing. No, I’ll never skip 2 days in a row working out. No, I won’t accept that this is a crazy time and I’ll just get back to my schedule when there is time.

That said, I’m probably going to end up moving something to the evenings. I actually have given up a puzzle I do each morning called Strands, and I don’t do Wordle first thing in the morning anymore. But more importantly, I won’t let scheduling be the reason that I don’t get my personal goals done each day.

I’ve said before that it’s the hard days that make you stick to a habit, but it’s also the way you handle your habits when your schedule doesn’t cooperate. When there is a metaphorical disturbance in the force, and things are not as they should be, these are the times habits are made or lost. Because habits are easy when they are neatly stacked into the routine of the day. But take away that routine and suddenly the habits take a lot more effort.

I guess I’ll just have to ‘use the force’… of momentum, of expectation, and of commitment to make sure that while my schedule and routines are totally disrupted, my habits will consistently prevail.