A bell once rung cannot be unrung!
A metaphor is nothing more than a kind of comparision, an association. As such it has no real existence in the World. I can't point to it like a cat, or an atomic bomb, either of which many would argue are more important.
I would argue that it is idea and the foundation of ideas that move the world.
I am an intellectual, or possibly a pseudo-intellectual, and I tend to see metaphor in the realm of ideas. Sometimes, I also see metaphor other places.
But it is the illumination that is what makes the metaphor work. What makes the metaphor a thing, out there, even though it is nothing.
Some may receive illumination in the smile they receive from a baby, from the wind blowing through trees marking its trail, from the bricks of a museum wall at night, from a child giving you something, eyes open. And then they must tell you how the world was changed by that for them.
And from their strength of their passionate vision, your world, too is different--forever.
I find myself thinking about Everything. What drives us to come here? What drives us to respond to what we see here? Do we find resonance to our thought, our feeling, to ourselves?
Or is it just that association, and illumination drive Everything as well?