Some old figures of speech are just so very convoluted it’s hilarious.

One that blows my mind is: “The boy is the father of the man.”

The meaning seems to be, “people show in childhood some of what they’ll be like in adulthood.” And from what I can tell, the reasoning is something like:

• A young boy, compared to his future adult self, is an earlier and similar entity, whose behavior can predict some of how his later self will behave someday.
• and what’s the best analogy for “earlier and similar entity whose behavior predicts that of the later version”?
• Well… the most obvious example would be a child who’s going to grow into an adult, but…
• that’s what we’re finding an analogy FOR, so that won’t work.
• How about “father”?

at some point you really start to wonder… why were we looking for a metaphor in the first place?

I dunno. People are weird.