Further thoughts on the differences between Water and Metal (see my last blog on 27 May)

I do a lot of my thinking as I walk.  And I have been doing a lot of walking recently, both because I no longer drive a car (quite deliberately having giving up driving because I’m not sure that all my faculties remain as acute as they need to be to cope with London traffic), and also because, on a more temporary basis, I fell over and bruised my bottom so much that for the past few weeks walking has been a less painful alternative to sitting.  Anyway, on one of these walks I was mulling over my last blog about the differences between Water and Metal, and the following definition just popped into my head:

             Water feels, whilst Metal perceives.

“What is the difference between feeling and perceiving?”, I then asked myself.  You feel through every pore in your body.  It is an instantaneous, immediate reaction to what is going on around you.  Metal, of course, also feels, as do all the other elements, but in a different way;  I do not think it is its first reaction.  With Metal there is a hidden filter between it and the feelings which are being aroused, and this acts as a first stage before the feeling part kicks in.  We know that the Lung filters everything before it allows it through.  At a spiritual/emotional level it filters feelings, too, as much as it filters air at a physical level.  Once feelings are filtered and allowed safe to pass through, Metal then also allows itself to feel. 

This is how I arrived at the word “perceive” for Metal.  It seems to me to be a word which has implicit within it this kind of filtering process - first thinking about something, and then feeling it.

I would be very interested to hear from any Metal people as to whether they recognise this description.  They are perfectly free to disagree with me.  After all, that’s how I continue to learn.