Sometimes metaphors jump out at me. Often they come in the form of dreams, or in a turn of phrase; sometimes one can emerge from a comment overheard on a train. But my current favourite metaphor is appearing in the real world - first of all in the form of the Olympic Torch and its nightly ceremonies; then during the Diamond Jubilee - the lighting of the beacons.

I wrote about this in a previous post, inspired by my enduring attraction to the lighting of the beacons sequence in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. 

In the film it seemed that all hope was lost, but then a hobbit manages to light the first beacon that leads to a string of beacons being lit across the mountains, resulting in the call for help being received and responded to by the King of Rohan.

These beacons had been in place for a long time but it took the actions of an ordinary and seemingly insignificant soul - inspired by an old wizard - to ignite them. As Gandalf proclaimed, “Hope is kindled.” And that’s how I feel today.

Because, thanks to the members of the amazing Inspired Entrepreneur community - my own fellowship - I feel that a group of ordinary souls can act to kindle hope in others.  And all thanks to our “old wizard”, Nick Williams, without whose gentle wisdom and inspiring leadership the beacons of hope may not have been kindled within us.

So now my metaphor is developing; each beacon allows another to ignite, calling the next to shine brightly in the midst of darkness. And thanks to the random wonder of the internet, I stumbled upon these words by Andy Goodacre, a chaplain in Tasmania, writing about the lighting of the beacons in the Lord of the Rings:

“For many of us, it can be hard to imagine what difference just a few of us building community together can really make it the world, even if we do manage to shine brightly before others.”

And he offers a quote from the Bible (Matthew 5:14-16), for which I’m grateful. I’m not a Christian, but I resonate with the wisdom:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others.”

So perhaps the world is depending on all of us to answer our calling and allow our light to shine so that the next beacon can be kindled. I’ll just go and check with Gandalf…

This is a fantastic action montage of one of the most visually stunning moments from the Lord of the Rings trilogy: the lighting of the beacons. I remember sitting in the cinema watching Return of the King with a friend and becoming overwhelmed at the sheer scale and majesty of the sequence - but also the deeper meaning of what I was seeing.

In the narrative arc of the film, this represents a major turning point, as Gandalf announces: “Hope is kindled.” And that’s how it impacted on me personally and emotionally - an amazing cinematic representation of that moment when you think all is lost, but suddenly there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The reason I bring this up now, several years after the film came out, is that last night I went to a fascinating talk that reconnected me with the power of metaphor. I was asked to think of a goal and then pick a picture from a number of options that represented this goal.

I was then taken through a process known as clean language which gave me the opportunity to fully explore the metaphor represented by the picture I had chosen. I was amazed when this led me to visualising an old-fashioned map - much like those imagined by Tolkien - and eventually the lighting of the beacons.

The thing with personal metaphors is that it’s hard to explain their significance to anyone else, simply because they are so resonant for you as an individual - so I won’t attempt to interpret it here.

Suffice to say it has given me a compelling story to explore which has something to do with the next steps I’m taking on my path.

Try it yourself. Think of a goal you hold dear, then find an image that represents that goal. Describe that image as it relates to that goal, until you start coming up with metaphors. Mine were “light at the end of the tunnel” and “beacons of hope”.

Then ask yourself some simple questions, starting with, what kind of x is that x? Mine might be: what kind of light is that light? Or what kind of beacon is that beacon? Then, is there anything else about that beacon? And whereabouts is that beacon?

In this way you can develop the metaphor and elicit some really useful information for yourself about ways in which you might be able to use it to effect change.

We are hard-wired to think in metaphor, and using metaphor in this way can help your brain to find ways of moving you effortlessly towards your desired outcome.

I’m going to watch the lighting of the beacons until I come up with a complete story with a full cast of characters. Then I’ll start using that map I found…

I mentioned in last Saturday’s post that if you Google me, the first listing is a link to an article I wrote for the Sunday Express in 2009, which tells the story of how I met my future husband - when I was 50 and he was 29. To celebrate our second wedding anniversary, I’m going to tell you the story behind the story. 

I was in the office at the Sunday Express, doing that girly thing of showing off my engagement ring to female colleagues. The editor came over to see what the fuss was about and when I told him I’d got engaged - at the ripe age of 51 - he immediately relaxed his furrowed brow, smiled broadly and said it had made his day.

Bear in mind this was in the thick of the credit crunch, just after the near-collapse of the banking system, and there wasn’t much good news to be had. He could see the story straight away: an independent woman who thought she’d never get married, finding love in middle age with a much younger man. Exactly the sort of thing to cheer up the readers on a dull Sunday morning.

So I wrote the story - one of the most personal I’d ever written - and it was published in January 2009 under the headline: “I found my true love at 50”. Even hardened news reporters approached me, slightly gooey-eyed, and told me it was the most touching story they’d read for ages. Younger women in the office told me I was “an inspiration”.

People like good news, and they don’t get enough of it. Anyway, on the morning that edition hit the newsstands, there was a knock on our door. It was a courier bearing a telegram from the production people behind ITV’s Good Morning, asking if we would like to appear on the sofa with Lorraine Kelly.

I called the number, whereupon a TV person asked me lots of questions about me, my fiancé, how I felt, how he felt, and what else we told the journalist who wrote the piece. When I told her I was that journalist, that I wrote the piece, she suddenly seemed less interested - as if being a journalist made me less of a “real” person.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear from her again. But even though we missed our moment on the daytime TV sofa, that wasn’t the end of the media interest. A few weeks later we were invited by Good Housekeeping magazine to appear in their feature about “unusual” couples.

I’m not sure why we said yes, but we did - probably because they wanted us to do a photo shoot and I thought it would be nice to have a new set of pictures. So we went to a house in north London that’s used for fancy magazine shoots and met the couple who were childhood sweethearts, lost touch and reunited later in life; plus the mixed-religion couple who had to battle prejudice to get married. “We’re the age-gap couple,” we said, and they all laughed. 

We were styled to within an inch of our lives and posed in front of a fashionably distressed shabby-chic kitchen cupboard. I could barely keep a straight face all the way through, it was so surreal and absurd and so not us. However, it gave me a glimpse into how the media turns ordinary people into commodities. 

After the Good Housekeeping feature appeared I had two more requests for interviews but we decided enough was enough. We didn’t want to keep retelling the story of how we’d met, or how we “dealt with” the age gap when it wasn’t an issue.

Apart from giving you an insight into how the media feeds on itself, what is it about our story that has such universal appeal? I suppose, as a never-before-married middle-aged woman, I represented a beacon of hope to all those women who don’t believe they’ll ever meet The One.

While I do believe that meeting my husband was a miracle and not a day passes when I’m not profoundly grateful for his presence in my life, I don’t want to become that story. Two years on, there are new stories we want to tell about ourselves.

Now I look at my wedding photos and remember the joy of the day but I’ve grown since then, I feel wiser as well as older. In the narrative arc of my life, meeting my husband was an exceedingly happy chapter, but the story moves on. In every moment there is a new tale to tell, and that fills me with hope.