Obstacles

 

If Portals get you excited, then Obstacles have a more depressing effect. Maybe even making us feel anxious,

Feel as if there is no escape…

 

 

Architects have been known to create them…

 

 

so has Nature…

 

 

 

We even have an expression to obstruct people from doing something…

 

 

All it needs to do is stretch across our path, and be of a size

or sufficient threat, and we feel blocked.

 

Of course, if we were friends of the person offering this facial Obstacle, and it were presented to our enemy

or to an obstacle in our way, it would have positive rather than negative connotations,

and we might call it ‘determination’. A nice quality in a hero.

 

 

Which maybe also accounts for why men with eyebrows that meet in the middle

are often thought attractive...

 

 

Origins of Obstacles and Portals?

 

Are they innate, or emergent properties of living in the world?

“George Lakoff and Mark Johnson … claim that most of our cognitive

processes depend upon metaphors derived from our preconceptual bodily experiences as infants.

 

…causing an activity is causing movement – propel/push (=encourage someone to do something).

To begin an activity is to is to start a journey/race –

get off to a good start, jump the gun, quick off the mark.

And to prevent/make difficult is to erect a barrier/impediment –

block, a hurdle, an obstacle, insurmountable (problems).

The salience and lexical significance of this metaphor derives from our first

experiences of walking and crawling where we probably had a great deal of encouragement

and praise for initial successes, so they became typical examples of goal-directed activity.”

(The Language of Metaphors, Andrew Goatly, Routledge, 2000, p 6)