Metaphors in language

I really hate most metaphoric speaking. I was chatting with a friend about this the other day. I'm okay with metaphors to demonstrate a particular point, but I feel they are widely overused (hence, the cliche). The person to whom I was speaking tends to use metaphors liberally in his communications, and I'm forever making him clarify his meaning. Really, I was starting to feel a little stupid about the whole thing. In trying to figure out why I so dislike metaphors, I realized that I just don't get most of them. I think too literally about most things. I stumbled a page that helped me understand why I don't understand metaphoric speaking and why that doesn't make me a complete moron.

Metaphors are so powerful because of one simple fact of human psychology—we react more readily to the emotional than the rational. Thanks to the differences between the two hemispheres of our brains, what catches our attention and sticks with us is what we see and feel via our right brain. After that, the rational left hemisphere can be engaged by the relational nature of the metaphorical information itself.

There's a lot more to it, but I found this bit especially interesting. Something I've worked very hard on is not reacting on an emotional level to all stimuli; instead I work to remove the majority of emotion from my responses, or at least curb the knee-jerk emotional reactions that can be thoughtless and hurtful. The goal is that my initial responses to events or circumstances are grounded in intellect and logic. I've been putting conscious effort towards this practice since my teens, and it has become almost instinctive for me.

I have a book called Metaphors We Live By that I have put off reading for over a year. I think I will get started on it.