I often find myself drawn back to a particular memory from my early school days. It’s not math class or reading time that sticks with me, but an afternoon in kindergarten, hands covered in thick, sticky paint, totally lost in the wild wonder of finger painting. This wasn’t just any project, though—this was my first taste of true, unfiltered creativity. The tactile thrill of dipping my hands into bold colors and smearing them across paper, without rhyme or reason, brought me into a world of vibrant chaos. Each swipe of my fingers across the page was a burst of freedom, a place where the lines on the page held no authority over my small hands and big imagination.
Then, in the midst of my masterpiece, I heard the sound of a throat clearing behind me. My teacher’s shadow loomed large, and with it came the unexpected: a reprimand. I wasn’t following the instructions, she said. The goal was not to make an abstract splatter-fest of primary colors but to carefully fill in a pre-drawn picture—a quaint “day at the park” scene, framed within a tidy rectangle, faint but deliberate. Trees, grass, birds—all waiting to be finger-painted in nice, orderly color.
I remember looking down and, for the first time, really seeing the lines. There it was, that picture I was apparently supposed to color in. And it hit me like a small bolt of lightning. Here I was, hands covered in bright paint, heart pounding with creativity, being told to contain myself, to fit my work neatly inside the lines. And for the first time in my five-year-old life, I felt the weight of a choice.
Up until that moment, I’d always felt that authority figures, like my parents and teachers, were to be respected, their directions followed. But I’d also been told to think for myself, to question and explore. And right then, the two collided. I felt the tension of a tiny rebellion brewing within me, a simple choice that somehow held an unexpected gravity: Was I going to give in and follow those quiet lines, or was I going to keep creating on my own terms?
As my teacher walked away, leaving me to ponder my next move, I knew my decision had been made before I even dipped my hands back into the paint. I took a deep breath, plunged both hands into the thick, swirling colors, and began smearing with renewed fervor, letting the paint go where it pleased. I smeared, swirled, and blotted, free from lines, free from rules. That moment, small as it may have seemed, drew a new boundary within me. It was the day I decided I wouldn’t be coloring inside anyone’s lines.
Looking back, I see that tiny rebellion as a defining moment, a glimpse of a life lived outside boundaries that someone else sets for me. It was there that I first sensed my pull toward independence, my commitment to balance respect for others with respect for myself. And while life has often required me to navigate the fine line between conformity and creativity, I know now that some lines are just meant to be crossed. That five-year-old at the finger-paint table? He knew it instinctively.
So, here’s to the moments we choose to go beyond the lines. To creating on our terms. And to letting the paint spill however it may.
100%!!!