Colouring outside the lines
When you're small and someone hands you a colouring book, the lines are already drawn for you. Stay inside them and you've done it right. Inside the lines is where everything is safe, predictable, where you know exactly how it's going to turn out. Stay within the borders and your drawing will always be beautiful. That's the whole appeal of it. But at some point, every child discovers the same small thrill, letting the crayon run just a little over the edge, and nothing bad happens.
That's where the real fun starts, and not just for a child with a crayon. The moment you cross a border, tempt a rule, push against something that was supposed to be fixed, that's usually where exploration begins. Where innovation begins. Where creativity actually sparks into something. Staying inside the lines keeps things safe. Going outside them is where things get made.
My sister and I grew up in the same house, same parents, same everything, really, and somewhere along the way we ended up holding two completely different colouring books. She called me once in January, asking whether she should take the Gotthard tunnel or drive over the pass on a trip to Italy she was planning for August. Seven months out, and she'd already thought it through properly. That's simply who she is. She still lives in the same city she was born in, and she's genuinely happy there.
I've lived in six countries. Another time she called and asked if I had any travel planned. I told her no, nothing at all. Two days later she saw on Facebook that I was in Saint Lucia, in the Caribbean. An opportunity came up, so I grabbed a bag and got on a plane. I did something similar with the Isle of Man itself, six years ago, a friend and I came here for half a day, cold, foggy, thoroughly miserable weather, to see if I might want to live here. By the end of that half day I'd decided. It could easily have gone the other way, I could have ended up somewhere I hated. It didn't. I'm still here, and I'm happy.
Her planning things properly, well in advance, doesn't make her better than me. And me jumping into opportunities, collecting a few more bruises and scars along the way because of it, doesn't make me worse than her either. Neither way of living is the lesser one, they're just two different ones, sitting in the same family, working perfectly well for each of us.
Here's the part that gets me every time I think about it. If I introduce her to a friend of mine who's gone further outside the lines than I ever have, she sees someone reckless. I see someone brave. Neither of us is wrong. We're just standing in different spots, looking at the same person.
I think that's what I actually want to say with this one. There's no better colouring book. There's only the one that's yours, and the relief of finding someone who lets you have it, even when theirs looks nothing like it. My sister has never once needed me to colour the way she does, and I've never needed her to colour the way I do. We just love each other exactly as we are, lines and all.
If you've ever sat across from someone you love, someone who does everything differently than you, and felt completely at peace with that, you already know exactly what I mean.
