If you’ve ever watched a baseball game, you know that most of the real work of coaching is done by the third base coach — who dazzles observant fans with a dizzying array of hand signals that only the batter and baserunners are able to interpret.
But in my experience, the first base coach is equally important — at least when you’re coaching 10-year-old boys you’re trying to get to run in the right direction at the right time.
So when my 10-year-old son played baseball and I was coaching first base, we had a private hand signal just between us. Whether he was at the plate or covering third base, I always encouraged him to maintain his poise, to remain positive regardless of the situation. When he was left standing by a called third strike or when a ground ball took a bad hop, I made sure I got his attention and, without saying a word, tapped a couple of fingers underneath my chin. That was my signal for keep your chin up.
This almost-archaic expression, keep your chin up, is an encouragement to be brave and upbeat regardless of difficult circumstances, so my nonverbal gesture was intended as a not-so-subtle admonition for my son to stand tall even if he had just fallen flat on his face.
Even if the odd superstitions of baseball are not as well known as they used to be, most of us are familiar with expressions like keep your chin up. And that’s even more odd, come to think of it, because the expression is actually a metaphor. The exhortation to keep one’s chin up suggests the notion of holding one’s head high, which reinforces the idea that “up” is a good thing. But why is that?
Among the geeky design principles that give me life, one of the most universal is the contrast between horizontals and verticals.
We humans encounter our physical world as vertical beings, so we are naturally accustomed to the contrast we face with a predominantly horizontal landscape.
Over time, some theorists have symbolically equated our experiences with horizontals as a reference to earth and man, while our encounters with verticals as representative of the heavens and the gods.
Whatever our frame of reference, our daily experiences as vertical beings in a horizontal landscape can be disorienting, but we are at least accustomed to experiencing the world in this way. Although we may take some comfort in our physical relationship to the world, we are possibly ignorant of how these spatial relationships impact how we think and feel and create meaning.
If this is true, that our daily encounters with the material world influence how we create and perceive meaning, then our thoughts — as complex as they are — are also expressed through metaphor, the ways we understand and experience one kind of thing in relation to something altogether different. Because our earthly bodies are so influenced by our correspondence with the earth, we respond with metaphorical opposites such as:
IN versus OUT
DARK versus LIGHT
POSITIVE versus NEGATIVE
UP versus DOWN
NEAR versus FAR
To be human is to naturally and intuitively consider our existence through these conceptual opposites, which, as some philosophers argue, are actually orientational metaphors. Because a drooping posture is associated with sadness and depression, we tend to think of these conditions as DOWN. Conversely, we associate an erect posture with a positive emotional state, so we tend to consider these conditions as UP.
We think of happy as being UP and sad as being DOWN, as reflected in the following expressions:
- I’m feeling up.
- She’s depressed.
- That boosted his spirits.
- Thinking about her always gives me a lift.
- She’s really low these days.
- I fell into a depression.
As interesting as these ideas may be, the question remains: So what?
It is my contention that understanding how humans make and perceive meaning is foundational toward effective storytelling. If metaphors dominate the human conceptual system, then they are arguably one of the fundamental building blocks of stories — how we yield to narrative to form and shape our view of the world.
Perhaps more significantly, the idea that many of our intrinsic metaphors — like happy = up and sad = down — are inspired by our bodily existence provides insight into our efforts to influence and shape human beings through design. The more we learn about how humans are formed, as I’ve written elsewhere, the more we should consider how to be intentionally conscious and ethically conscientious in our visual storytelling.
So keep your chin up, and swing for the fence.