Today, I taught my child how to color inside the lines. I instructed him to make sure he used his crayon just inside the shapes of the objects and to make sure everything was clean and neat. While he was coloring a crane with the precision intent only a toddler can master, I pointed out that the body of the machine and the window should be different colors. But when I did this, it hit me, that coloring inside the lines never lent itself to creativity or individuality. Shouldn’t I be teaching him to color both inside and out, choose his own colors, make his picture whatever his heart desired? I mean, the frame of the crane doesn’t have to be the standard construction machine yellow. The background of the picture can match the objects if that’s what he wanted. Or, I wondered, is it against the principles of discipline to teach him to color outside of the lines? At some point in his life he will have to conform to something. Where coloring in the lines will be necessary. And even as a black man, life saving. So then, how do I teach him when it is appropriate and safe to figuratively draw the line at convention and live outside the lines?
The thing is I don’t have the answers, but I do have my own life’s experiences. For example, I always wanted to write. When I was 9, I wrote my first book. It was about a Native American boy battling a monster on the other side of a forbidden hill. I did illustrations and all. But as time went on, writing fell by the wayside so that I could concentrate on checking the mandatory boxes of attending school and participating in the standard extracurricular activities. Even though when I got to college I majored in English/Creative Writing, writing wasn’t fun for me. It wasn’t the free flowing movement of putting thought to paper, but instead it was the coloring inside the lines of what the professors wanted me to do. There was not room for individuality, for my own personal growth. I was told to write a certain way, or that my writing was wrong. I was even told not to apply to an MFA program, because my professor believed he didn’t see any talent in me. So I listened and didn’t apply. I stuck to the safe route and went to a graduate program studying policy. I worked for a while, made a living, paid some bills, but still unfulfilled and still not writing, I went back to school hoping to start a career in a respected profession. Basic and conventional, I know. So it was no wonder that still coloring in the lines didn’t work. In law school, a law firm partner laughed at me during an interview because I had listed on my resume that I had won poetry awards in our law school creative writing publication (awards that my college professor told me I would never win). She laughed at me because she said she never had time to write in law school and that in her opinion writing for fun was such a frivolous thing. Needless to say, as I colored inside of the lines, I saw I faced rebuke when I dared to step out. So I continued to stay in the proverbial assigned lines for years until the calling to break free of the constraints got too loud and I had to answer. You see, I learned that coloring inside the lines with what you want to do with your life is too confining and definitely too safe. We are all put on Earth to live and as God says, to live abundantly. For me, denying what I wanted to do, what made me happy, what soothed my soul meant staying in the lines someone else had constructed. It meant not living life abundantly. But I know I was put here to live boldly and freely. Not caring what others think or say. Not needing encouragement to stay basic or approval for doing such from anyone. I’ve learned I was put here to just live my life doing what I was called to do. Living outside of the lines and full of color. And I guess, that is a starting point to teach my child.
New day, new start over Navy Pier.