One of my favorite childhood pastimes was coloring.
Although I tried pretty hard, I wasn’t always successful at staying in the lines, and I didn’t always care if I messed up either. The experience and time spent coloring was usually more meaningful to me than the finished product.
Sometimes I feel life is a lot like those color-by-number projects, except in watercolor.
We all start off like a blank page, and as we gain knowledge, learn lessons, overcome challenges, and mature, our sheets are painted in.
Not all of us use the same colors to fill the same spaces.
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Some of us are more careful than others, but we all occasionally yet accidentally spill over the lines and find we create a new vivid color blended with the one on the other side; other times the same act might result in a dingy, smudgy color.
But even those splotches have their place.
I guess it’s time we stop thinking of life as an art contest–as if in the end we’re going to get a reward for the prettiest pieces.
Since we all know mistakes can’t be wiped away, we should learn to make the best of them. We can try painting over them by giving ourselves a second chance to recreate a color, or leave the blotches as they are to tell the story behind them later on.
Be proud of your masterpiece. It won’t be like anyone’s, and no one will be eligible to judge the good, better, or best. Paint at your pace and color in your character.
Dare I say it: Keep calm and color on.
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