I was watching an episode of "Who the !*#@ did I Marry?" (a new Netflix find). A friend of the woman who had been duped by a con man ex-husband said that the experience made her friend friend change from someone who was always taken care of to someone who takes care of business herself. "She did a complete 360!"
Let's think this one through...if you're driving a car and you do a 360-degree turn, where do you end up? Going back in the same direction of course. If you make a 180-degree turn, you're going in the complete opposite direction.
Geometrically speaking, it's a change in direction, so if your life was heading toward disaster and you made a "complete 180" you'd be moving away from disaster. If you made a "complete 360" you'd just still be heading toward disaster (and be a little dizzy).
I think this one may be hard for people for a couple of reasons.
1) Analogies that use physical referents (e.g., directions and degrees) for things like life choices are inherently ambiguous. Life trajectories aren't defined on a geometric plane, so what does 360-degrees mean anyway?
2) 360 sounds better than 180, so maybe people like to use the larger number to suggest more change (180 or half a turn) sounds like half-a-change. Of course if you make 360-degree turn you're heading back in the same direction you were before...which I've always taken to mean (by analogy) back to the same lifestyle, bad choices, etc.
3) Since turning 180 means your going back "from whence you came," maybe people think that sounds like regression, or going back to old habits.
Givn the ambiguity, maybe doing a "45 degree turn" is a better phrase...one's life on a totally new (perpendicular) track! Think it will catch on? :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete