What we have found is that various aspects of event structure, including notions like states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes, and means, are characterized cognitively via metaphor in terms of space, motion, and force. Causes are forces. Actions are self-propelled movements. Purposes are destinations. Difficulties are impediments to motion.
External events are large, moving objects.
Long term, purposeful activities are journeys. This mapping generalizes over an extremely wide range of expressions for one or more aspects of event structure. For example, take states and changes. We speak of being in or out of a state, of going into or out of it, of entering or leaving it, of getting to a state or emerging from it. This is a rich and complex metaphor whose parts interact in complex ways.