"The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?"

Human communication is often considered a vehicle for the simple transference of ideas or information, but Dennis Potter points out an extraordinary capacity: the creation of metaphor. The metaphor is not just an embellishment; it is a leap into a new dimension of meaning. When a speaker or a writer compares love to a battlefield or time to a river, they collapse boundaries between concepts, inviting listeners or readers to perceive one thing in terms of another. This act of yoking together disparate ideas generates new layers of understanding, making the intangible accessible and the abstract concrete.

Metaphor functions as a bridge for the imagination. It offers the unexpected: suddenly, an emotion might be given shape and texture, or an experience might be illuminated through comparison with something utterly unrelated. Such transformations in language foster empathy by enabling people to inhabit perspectives beyond their immediate experience. One can feel the weight of “a heart of stone,” or sense hope as “a light at the end of the tunnel.” These expressions are not literal, yet through them, reality is freshly perceived. The leap that metaphor achieves is not just a leap between words but a leap between ideas, perceptions, and even emotions.

Beyond poetic beauty, metaphor reflects the mind’s yearning for connection and synthesis. Human beings naturally search for patterns and relationships, and metaphor provides a linguistic mechanism for this drive. It is a testament to the creativity that runs through everyday speech and writing, one does not need to be a poet to speak metaphorically; it arises spontaneously, in jokes, complaints, confessions. The creation of metaphor, in its strangeness, shows how language is not just a tool but a living, evolving system, capable of expanding the boundaries of consciousness. To create metaphor is, in essence, to participate in the ongoing act of world-making, reshaping how we see, feel, and understand all that surrounds us.