Let’s Color Outside the Lines!
Posted by Pat on July 7, 2012 in Uncategorized | ∞
Most of us spent our childhood learning to color inside the lines, to do it right. Our parents and teachers wanted us to fit in, to succeed. Do you remember?
I remember the art lesson in kindergarten when we were asked to draw a tree. I pictured the tree outside my bedroom window early in the morning with its tangle of branches showing the light and dark of the sunshine, the multiple colors of green, yellow, and black that so entranced me.
Then my teacher examined my paper and responded with “no, no..that’s not what a tree looks like. Here, look at Sharon’s. See the brown straight trunk, the round top of the green leaves? Now, that’s what a tree looks like.”
And inwardly thinking that it only looked like a green sucker to me, I still went ahead, crumpled my paper and started over again, to do it right.
Learning to do it right, that’s what passed as education for many of us in our early years, learning to color inside the lines of a coloring book that someone else had designed.
And I remember the box of six fat crayons that I was given to work with, while I dreamed of the box of 64, with colors such as magenta, cornflower blue, bronze.
Though we were born with unlimited possibilities and potential talents, we learned early our boundaries, limitations and restrictions.
Yes, there is value in learning to color within the lines, to develop the skills of control and restraint. But many of continue as if we were still in kindergarten, setting goals and living a life based on our past experiences, the limits set by others and finally internalized by ourselves.
We learned to stand in line well…lines for lunch, for recess and even for the bathroom. Now we may not even know if the line we are standing in, so quietly and orderly, is even a line for something we really want.
So now that we are “adults” do we still feel bound by rules, the lines, the expectations of our previous selves?
Living is an art. And art, like everything else, begins in the mind. We are the painters, the sculptors, the architects of our own lives. And we don’t have to stay in the box; we can move beyond our previous limits.
What kind of picture are we painting on our own life canvas? Is it filled with joy and beauty? Color, depth, excitement?
If our “life picture” has not been what we really want, we can begin a new masterpiece today. No matter what choices we may have made previously, today is a new day and we can start fresh on a new canvas. In small ways, at every point in our day, we can choose to express more fully.
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Even if we have previously given in the impulse for stability, we can now choose to respond to the impulse for growth. We can accept growth, change, as a positive value.
So what step do you want to take today to move outside of the box, to color outside the lines? Please share your choice in the comments below and join in the movement towards more freedom, flexibility, and fun in life!