Whats a good metaphor for a metaphor?

Life is symbolic. There are probably scientific arguments to back that up. As humans we relate with our environment by assigning significance to things that don't deserve it. My ex girlfriend bought me the comforter I use every night, and sometimes in the middle of the day. To me, every time I touch it, I think of her. I think about both of us underneath it, and how it feels like I'm under-utilizing it by myself. But it is just a comforter. It is pieces of fabric sewn together by foreigners abused and exploited by corporate America. In the case of my comforter, Martha Stewart (I have no idea what methods the Martha Stewart line of bedding uses for production, but take what I said and apply it to someone more deserving if I'm wrong). I imagine those laborers would look at the comforter and find a sense of anger. If we did not identify material and unalive things with feelings, then humans would be very different creatures.

As a writer, I'm overwhelmed with the connections I make consciously and the meaning of the connections I make subconsciously. With my head in my hands, elbows on my knees, I lean forward in this plastic lawn chair. I survey my vision. I see the red clay tiles, droppings from the trees, bits of refuse, and a twig  caught in another twig, undulating in the wind. My attention is sharpened and I analyze the nature of that twig. More, I analyze my perception of the twig. Its motion draws my attention, and I start to think about the elements of my life that make up me and how routinely I forget them because I am focusing on what is moving. Then I think, it's just a fucking twig. I'm looking at it because the human eye is drawn to motion, as I learned in one of my photography classes. The twig is not my natural inclination to hyper-analyze whatever I'm thinking about. Its just a fucking twig. But, it is no longer a twig because it is in my brain, and now it is something else: a metaphor, a simile, a symbol.

Is that the extent of an individual's interaction with their environment? Are humans so selfish that the most mundane exchange between twig and wind is transformed into a meaningful personal moment? By claiming the twig as my own, I disrespect its reality. The twig thinks more of itself than to consider it as valuable fodder for my brain cannon's misfirings. (I think that was the dumbest sentence I've ever written).

Why do we do that? I hope I'm not alone in perceiving the world as a freight train of undeserved metaphors drawn from car after car of a logical void. I know that twig has no bearing on how I approach the world, or what I think of it. So why do I do it? Why does that twig have significance? I think the logical explanation is that a person's brain is constantly trying to solve the puzzle of perception. Humans have to make sense of their world or drop into insanity. Perhaps the way the rocks lie on top of each other is a product of gravity, but in my perception, it is a symbol of lives overlapping hard and unbudging until a greater force shifts them violently. I know why the rocks lie there. I guess I am trying to explain my own mental stack of granite, a confusing and mystic phenomenon to me, with what I know and understand. The world I see behaves in a way that makes sense. The wind blows, so that twig wavers. The rocks are heavy and the wind isn't strong enough to move them. I crave that same scientific and rational explanation for my own thoughts. I think for now I will have to settle for metaphor.