Let Them Scribble

New Year’s Day. It was a lazy day here, no one had to work, and I may have been overly excited about wearing pajamas all day long.

Adopting the hermit life has one setback: you find yourself staring at all the things at your house that you neglect every other day because you’re too busy or you just don’t have time. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m hoping I’m not the only one.

Anyway, nothing can destroy the dream of a peaceful day at home in pajamas like a sink full of dirty dishes and wading through a few inches of dog hair to get to the couch. 😳
So I do the obvious.

I pick up an adult coloring book and the world around me becomes a blur. (Because I can’t color with my glasses on.) I know you were thinking I would pick up a swiffer or a dish rag, but I’m clearly not the motivated person I long to grow up to be.

Great start to the new year.

Hang in there, I’m actually not writing to divulge the grand secret of my housekeeping prowess (or lack thereof, as the case may be).

An hour or two elapsed and the blurriness spread to include my whole line of vision. My golf elbow was burning and I was bitter about it since I’ve never even played golf.

And I had a revelation.
I wanted to scribble. To free myself from those teeny tiny little lines. But I just couldn’t. And I remarked out loud how wonderful it must be to be 4 years old and to just scribble all over a coloring page.

Then I thought of my son who was coached in kindergarten to color things the “right” color. No purple dogs or blue trees allowed.

And I think of all the ways we squelch their imaginations and squash their dreams. Sometimes foolishly but often in the guise of helping them embrace reality. When a 6 year old says they want to grow up to be a veterinarian and a ballerina and travel to the moon, we think it’s the cutest thing ever. If we received the same response from our 16 year old, we would cringe at our failure as a parent to prepare our kids for the ‘real world.’

I’m not implying that we should abandon practicality or not encourage our children to set realistic goals or teach them how to plan and follow through on those plans. I know that keeping our heads in the clouds can make it hard to accept a less than perfect job in order to keep the light bill paid. But maybe we could teach them to put their feet firmly on the ground AND put their head in the clouds. Maybe we could tell them they are tall enough and strong enough and smart enough, to do just that.

I was a kid with a big imagination. I grew up in the country with no neighbor kids to play with, but I had wide open spaces on my grandparents’ farm and endless possibilities to create imaginary scenarios. I dared to believe that anything was possible, and I knew that one day I would be just like Nancy Drew and also own a pet shop and an earthworm farm and be married to Bo Duke. Then I grew up, became practical, and had a plan but tossed it aside to raise a family. No regrets from me. But now that my children are grown, I realize I have forgotten how to dream for myself. I’ve trained myself to run from the possibility of failure, which means I don’t take risks, which means I don’t dream too big or too crazy.
No purple dogs or blue trees allowed.

How about you? What dreams have you convinced yourself you’re not good enough or worthy to achieve? What goals scare you too much to admit out loud much less take a risk and go for them? Maybe it’s been a while since you even allowed yourself to think outside the box. Maybe you haven’t scribbled outside the lines in a very long time.

We all need to eat better, exercise more, pray more, and read a few classics…I’m challenging you to dust off the little kid that wanted to be a veterinarian and a ballerina. I’m challenging you, as a new year begins, to just begin to entertain the possibility that you can dream again, if that baby step is all you can do. Because that’s a start. While your feet remain on the ground and you head back to a job that maybe you don’t like or you keep your babies fed or you juggle all the many hats you wear to keep your family together…stretch your head into the clouds and see the view from there.

Give yourself permission to dream and, better yet, permission to believe that dreams can come true. The most successful people on earth have often had to risk and overcome overwhelming failure and disappointment. But they knew that if they never tried, their chance of success was zero.

If you never try, you’ll never fail. But you’ll also never succeed.

This year, I hope you encounter a few blue trees and purple dogs.
Let your kids scribble outside the lines.
Maybe even join them.