OVER the years I have appreciated more and more the power of metaphors as tools for transformation and as a self developing pathway for growth in an ever changing world of uncertainty. These nuggets of wisdom are constants in the shifting sands of time.
In Belfast words have always mattered, in a city where streets once echoed fear and oppression, hopelessness and grief, our language was not just how we spoke, but how we survived.
Words offer us more than comfort, they offer us a way to heal, to dream and most of all to transform. For me, metaphor is carrying one thing inside another, giving shape to the unspeakable. When we say someone is “weathering the storm" or "walking through fire", we are not just making conversation, we are crafting survival stories.
These images allow the weight of trauma to be shared without having to relive every scar. In a place whose culture, whose silence, often grew thick around hurt, metaphor gently prises the door open. It allows us to nod to the ache without drowning in it.
My father used to say that my Granda Liddy, who was a tailor, said that our sayings are stitched into us like old, worn quilts – soft, familiar and deeply comforting. Granda Liddy should know as he survived the Belfast Blitz. I remember phrases like “What’s for you won’t go past you” and when we whisper “You can’t pour from an empty cup" we remind each other in a plain but simple way that self care is not selfish.
In our city, where harshness and resilience walk side by side, these sayings were a healing balm.
I also love how sayings and metaphors not only tend to old wounds, they dream new worlds into being. To say someone is “building bridges" or “planting seeds” is a declaration that tomorrow can be different. I love how metaphor stretches the imagination, nudging it past the rubble of history towards green shoots and new horizons. In our city still marked by the past, our ability to picture growth is nothing short of radical.
Sayings have the power to ground us, even as they lift us. They remind us that our story is bigger than any single moment of sorrow. They carry the voices of our grandparents, our neighbours, and become the river that runs beneath us, deep, constant and full of life.
Here in Belfast, where murals still tell old stories and peace walls still slice the air, language continues to build invisible bridges. We are reminded that while our histories may differ, the human heart breaks and mends in much the same way. I believe that through metaphor and sayings we find each other again, not as enemies, not as strangers, but as fellow travellers, each carrying our own battered, beautiful story. In the end, it is language that helps us speak ourselves home, word by word, image by image. Belfast heals and hopes aloud.
Let’s all remember that everyone has their story to tell, as we meet and greet newcomers, and in the words of Pope Francis, who in my eyes is the Patron Saint of Metaphor: "Rivers do not drink their own water, trees do not eat their own fruit, the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is the rule of nature. We are all born to help each other no matter how difficult it is... Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you."
