Here we founder on the rocks of metaphor. "falling to your death," eh? It does happen.
You lost me.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Here we founder on the rocks of metaphor. "falling to your death," eh? It does happen.
You lost me.
You start with physical death as the basis of a metaphor for the end or demise of more abstract constructs: “The death of an idea”, “the death of a business”. These referents of the metaphor have been called metaphrands, so what is the metaphrand in your case? A spiritual death, I guess. But spiritual life is advocated to be something TRANSCENDING physical death, so when you say “falling to your [spiritual] death” I guess you mean “Really really really really REAL death” as Ernest might say.
But what did you use to express this? The metaphor of physical death ... falling to death, which holds special terror to many, grounded in millions of years of evolution. So how can this be anything other than really really really really REAL death after all?
I just don’t think these airy rhetorical flights can ever get away from it.