Metaphorical

(1) Best Representation

Mint chocolate chip, strawberry, caramel swirl... No matter how you take it, ice cream makes life a lot sweeter. However, its sweetness doesn't come easy: it is an active process of getting chills and avoiding all the melting drops of sugary goodness. In this way, ice cream does 'reflect' the processes and importance of reflection. Reflection begins with placing value on oneself long and steady enough to begin to critically reflect- you must push past the cold, take that positive risk to end with sugary sweetness or a little bit of an uneasy stomach ache or potentially sticky fingers that will leaves traces of yourself every where you go. You indulge, thus, to discover all the feelings resting at the tips of your taste buds.

(2) Worst Representation

Ice cream is cold, but that coldness is fleeting. You indulge knowing the potential consequences: sweetness, stomach ache, sticky fingers. It is a rational choice, and most importantly, it is fleeting- momentary on a hot summer day. On the other hand, reflection requires staying still. You cannot be fleeting, your thoughts cannot be fleeting because an examination of one's self must be purposeful to reveal the extraordinary. Ice cream is nice on a hot summer day; it is not a sustained critical process that can turn someone inside out in the way that shows "imagination is what saves us" (Yancey).

(3) Prediction

Dr. Kt believes the metaphor needs to be expanded- an ice cream cone is much too simple, reductionist to a fault. Perhaps the metaphor should have been a 'banana split' or a Dairy Queen Blizzard or a multi-layered sundae. Reflection (although when popularized, often reduced down to a 'lovey-dovey hippy tendency) is complex and produces diverse results. It is not always easy or hard. It cannot stay restricted to a binary of 'painful' or 'relief'. It has many layers that move beyond the scope of a few scoops of ice cream.

(4) Agree-Disagree With Reaction

While the argument to expand the metaphor to a more complex model is persuasive, I disagree that the metaphor of a three-scoop ice cream cone cannot make an important point in regards to the purpose of reflection. With the metaphor of ice cream, I argue that reflection should be seen as a form of radical self-care or radical self-love. I use the term 'radical' to denote that reflective practitioners must move beyond fleeting thoughts or one-time compliments in order to push their thinking (and thus, their ways of living) to the threshold level. Radical self-care may be a process awash with disturbance and discomfort, but in the end, a more wholesome understanding of the soul awaits- for better or worse. Reflection as radical self-care begins with a positive risk, much like the positive risk of eating ice cream: indulgence with a greater purpose.