1. It's not a metaphor. I forget what it is exactly. However, the "wave" is the metaphor for a person and the "beach" would be a metaphor for life if it wasn't "beach of life".
2. It seems to be an alteration of the rather trite "wave on the ocean of life".
-Waves wash upon the beach. -They are evanescent. -There are always more waves. -The effect of a wave on the beach will not last for eternity.
2, I think somewhere near what gantic said, but more of that as a human you are a contributor to something, but still only a speck among the contribution.
first you have to examine the word itself. The idea of a metaphor is jumping out of a system to examine an object. The general idea is to use an object to compare something we don't know, in other words a representation.
You could have used the famous metaphor "life is a B.itch" comparing life to being a "b.itch" because of how cruel it can be sometimes.
the correct idea for a metaphor, is demonstrated by "art". The artist has an idea, and to convey the idea through to the audience (metaphor) the artist uses a medium (sculpture, painting ect.) to let the audience know what he/she is thinking (the metaphire)
With this basically anything can be seen as a metaphor, the computer you see infront of you is a metaphor for the word "computer" and thus diluted down to the very basic English language, a metaphor is using words to invoke a common picture that can be interpreted easily.
This is an example:
the animal is a: kakradolbluff
now nobody has ever seen a kakradolbluff before because I just made it up, to let everyone see it in their minds I have to invoke a picture through metaphors.
The kakradolbluff stood feirce the abyss in it's mouth shed very little light, the thick shaggy carpet of fur coated his body as he stood upon 3 stilts.
from this you can guess he has 3 legs, a big hairy pelt and a very deep mouth. That is how metaphors can be used.
