Color Outside the Lines

I still remember the first time I picked up a crayon.
It was yellow, stubby, wrapped in torn paper, warm from my small hand.
At that moment, I didn’t know what this thing was.
I didn’t know it held power to create suns, lions, or whatever my young mind could imagine.

All I saw was mom or dad handing me paper,
and showing me how to move this magical stick back and forth,
leaving trails of color like footprints across a blank world.
I giggled at the marks, not caring where they landed,
finding joy in the simple act of seeing something appear where once there was nothing.

Then we got older.
We were introduced to the coloring book.
A book filled with princesses, trucks, and superheroes,
and more crayons to choose from—blue that could be water or sky,
green that could be trees or dragon scales,
and that one pink crayon that somehow always went missing.

We began to develop our ability to be “creative.”
The pages had lines, and we noticed the black outlines that formed the shapes.
Our crayon now had a playground:
lines to bounce between, curves to loop around, spaces to fill with joy.

As the world turned and we grew up,
our coloring tactics became clearer, and with them came an invisible rule:
Stay inside the lines.
Color carefully.
Make sure it looks right.

Isn’t that how life sometimes feels?
We’re taught to color inside the lines of every chapter—
go to school, get the degree, climb the ladder, pay the bills, smile at the camera,
hold it all together, stay in the neat boxes.

But where is that childlike curiosity now?
Where is the joy that came from moving your crayon back and forth,
not caring if the sky was orange or the grass was blue?

What if we stepped back into that time when it didn’t matter about the lines?
When it was about the moment,
the giggle of creativity,
the curiosity that brought you joy even when your rainbow had a brown streak running through it.

Life is not about staying perfectly within the lines.
Sometimes your lines will blur,
sometimes your pages will tear,
sometimes your colors will run together,
and it will still be your masterpiece.

The pages of the coloring book are the chapters of your life,
and you, dear friend, are the crayon.
Build that curiosity as you get older.
Color wildly.
Ask questions.
Take risks.
Doodle on the margins.
Let yourself feel the joy of coloring outside the lines again.

Because sometimes, the most beautiful parts of your life will happen
when you let your colors bleed beyond what you thought was allowed.

“Don’t just live within the lines you were given. Draw your own, color outside of them, and call it your life.”