My elementary school had an Earth Day coloring contest when I was in the first grade. We competed by grade, and astoundingly the first prize winners in each grade would receive $50. Second $25. Third $15.
All of those numbers baffled my mind at that age – even third prize was basically a millionaire in my book.
On the day of the contest, my teacher, Mrs. Tarr, handed each of us a piece of paper that had a drawing of a boat in the middle of the ocean. Trash was falling out of the boat, and on the whole it was not a happy or inspiring scene.
Our job was to take our crayons, color the picture, and submit our work to the teacher-judges.
I did what came naturally. I colored as tightly inside the lines as possible. I colored very literally, too. The water was deep blue. The sky was light blue. The bottles floating in the water were green.
Turns out I was exceptional at coloring insides the lines. I won the contest.
Crown me a multi-millionaire!
That early experience cemented a couple truths for me:
Staying inside the lines is how you do things.
Staying inside the lines is richly rewarded.
I went on to spend a good bit of my childhood coloring inside the lines – getting good grades, avoiding trouble, and generally becoming what people called “a good kid.”
And society often rewards the line-keepers. Good grades = good school options = good job = …
You can almost write the narrative that accompanies a certain middle to upper-middle class, line-keeping reality in our nation.
Indeed…
Whether in our family,
our school,
our workplace,
our community,
our political party……there are expected ways one can stay inside the lines and bring together the ‘right’ kind of picture.
And, to be sure, some lines are good, helpful, and quite important!
(Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash)
London’s Mind the Gap lines are a memorable version of traffic-related lines around the world - and all of them are life-preserving!
Children thrive in settings with good, predictable boundaries.
Some people join the military very much looking for the gift of order, structure, and lines amid otherwise choatic realities.
At the same time, have you ever seen a paint-by-the-number picture…
In an art gallery (excluding purposely ironic examples)?
Framed in home (excluding loving parents who frame every last scrap of color that the child has provided)?
Discussed, debated, and discovered afresh over a meal with friends?
Lines are great training wheels, but a poor way to experience the ride of life. Because while keeping to the lines (usually) helps to ensure you won’t fail or fall, the lines themselves can’t teach creativity, freedom, or joy.1
And they certainly never introduce us to the Artist that resides within (and yes, all of us have one).
My friend Nicole knew about her Artist-Within far before I did. Nicole’s Earth Day coloring came in second place that year, but her picture captured much more truth and beauty.
She had used greens, yellows, and blues as well as pinks, purples and oranges to create a tapestry of color that sometimes stayed inside the lines, sometimes went very far outside of it, but always it worked.
She had decided to color a vision of hope less concerned with perfect line-keeping and more concerned about the surprising angles of beauty and joy - even on a polluted template.
I’ll never forget her drawing because my visceral reaction went so strongly in two opposite directions:
My envy declared: That’s not how you draw!
My admiration declared: How did she even think to use those colors? That way? Beyond the lines?!
Today, I readily recognize: she intuited something deeply true about art (and life).
Because, truly, life is art.2
And the most beautiful lives are like the best artists - they put brush to the smoggy, deeply-imperfect canvas of this world’s reality and risk going where the surprising color takes them, even if it’s largely unclear what will emerge or how it will emerge. The only thing about which they are entirely confident is that each fresh brushstroke will make clear where and how the next brushstroke is made.
Such lives, they create…
Tapestries from Trust.
Impressions from Intuition.
Canvases from Curiosity.
Stick to the lines just-so and I bet you can make $50. A lot more than that, too.
Risk upon the canvas bold brushstrokes of your unique gifts, voice, and intuition? Risk colorful strokes that may well fall both inside of and outside of the expected lines?
Which is to say…risk the fully, genuine You upon this world?3
That’s priceless art.
That’s the stuff that endures for generations.
That’s the stuff that inspires other artists to risk likewise.
(Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash)
So…
What’s the canvas you’re working these days?
Is it early stages or far enough along that you have a name for it?
Or, perhaps, is today the day when the brush is picked up and you let some color spread right across a tired line?
Another apt metaphor: it’s one thing to learn how to play lines of music with technical precision. It’s wholly another to play those lines with soul (let alone risk an improvised version). And the audience always knows the difference.
And the older I get the more compelled I am by the rejoinder - Art is Life.
“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” - Howard Thurman, Spelman College Address, 1980.
Love this. Who decides the lines. I may have missed the point. But think everyone’s lines are just a little different.
Breaking outside the lines is not so easy, even if one wants to do it. It requires putting aside years of conditioning, as well as a willingness to give up control. And yet, it could be wildly rewarding. Thanks for the encouragement.