Creativity means coloring outside the lines

How to be free in a world that tells you to fit inside a box

Secret Beach, Costa Rica courtesy of Brad @westviewstudiocr

Today, we are going back into my drafts, back into what I wrote for you that still feels important and got superseded, by something else. It doesn’t mean it is bad. It means something else got louder. But often it is the quieter whispers that matter most and I don’t want this to be overlooked and forgotten. And this topic today will help you with what is coming. Because, to transform, one has to be willing to be different. Different from what others have grown used to you being. Different from how you imagined you could be. And, courageously different from how you have been taught you “should” be, or “they” want you to be. You have to allow yourself to color outside the lines to be truly free. And that, dear companion-on-this-journey, is our topic for today.

Today, I woke up early, before 6am early, to meet a friend on Zoom for a guided breath-work session. Now, breath-work is one of many things that is often taught through rules. For instance, there is the box breath. You inhale for a certain count, hold your breath for the same count, exhale for the same duration, and hold on the exhale for an equal amount of time. Inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and hold at the bottom of the exhale for four seconds.

There you have it. The box breath. Four activities of equal duration, like the sides of a square box.

This breath is said to calm the nervous system. Maybe you have tried it? Maybe, like me, something about it actually feels restrictive and anxiety producing, despite what the “experts,” “studies,” and “research” says.

I am happy to report that my friend, Clem, did not teach the box breath today and I am pretty sure if she had, it is likely she would have said something like this:

We are going to breathe in this pattern, but the most important thing is that you feel what your body wants. Hold as long as it feels right for you. Trust yourself. Trust how you feel and trust your intuition.

That kind of a box breath works quite well for me. I don’t strain to accomplish whatever count the instructor has selected (and often, they increase the count during the practice, which typically causes me to become tense and sweaty).

Today, a couple images came to me as Clem taught. At one point she said, “Let your shoulder blades on your back spread apart on your inhale. Feel your back.”

I also had an image of my root chakra come to me in all its bright, red glory, sitting at the base of my pelvic floor.

Something happened and as I followed her suggestions I also started to experiment with a different kind of breathing. I started to breathe into the red energy in my pelvis while I also felt my breath expand through my torso. My shoulder blades moved in and out like a bird’s wings and breathing began to feel like movement and the movement was flying, with my wings pulsing on my back. Breath. Energy. Movement. Beauty. Creativity.

You can do this in your own way. My description can be a diving board or a base for you to experiment with and then see where it leads you, uniquely. This morning with Clem, I allowed my own creativity. I allowed Clem’s soothing invitations and direction and I was able to feel a sense of something new happening.

We are taught to follow directions. We are taught to make lists and to accomplish things. We are taught early on that these things matter more than creativity.

My favorite story I ever wrote is lost. I know I wrote it in pink ink and stapled the small pages together. I know it was about a duck and that I kept it in a tiny metal box of childhood treasures, which disappeared during a move to a new house.

And I know it was the last truly creative thing I wrote for years because when I wrote it, something in young-me still felt I could be an author.

But I quickly learned to write paragraphs with topic sentences and conclusions at the end. Then I learned to fit writing into a box of five paragraph essays. And like longer and longer holds in box breathing, I learned to turn those essays into term papers with bibliographies. I wrote college entrance applications, most of them also following rules someone told me. I needed to talk about volunteer work I had done and if I hadn’t done any, I needed to get on it quickly and accomplish something. Or I needed to make something I had done sound like volunteer work.

Just like everyone else was told to write.

College entrance applications became lists, or boxes, and everyone tried to fill out the template in some way that would stand out like a five paragraph essay. Which is kind of a joke.

There was one school I really wanted to go to. I remember writing from my heart, with passion. I told them why I wanted to go to their school so badly. I told them about what I loved and how I stayed up after midnight in high school to study art history. I told them my dreams and what I wanted to be.

That school sent me a letter soon after. They admitted me early.

But mostly, for me, writing was box breathing.

I took an advanced placement writing exam in high school for college credit. I scored a 3 out of 5. It was good enough to get credit in most colleges, but not good enough for me. So I memorized some Shakespeare quotes, took it again, and inserted them into my essays. I got rid of the 3 and it became a 5.

I was box-breathing, just as I had been taught. English teachers like Shakespeare quotes. I had learned how to impress people.

And what I want to say with all this, from the top of Mount Everest if there was more air up there to breathe, is that I really, really feel it is time to notice all these rules and boxes and time to give yourself permission to be free.

It is time to let go of allowing other people to be “the” authority. It is time to color outside the lines. It is time to be messy with your life.

When you allow your creativity, you will create things you don’t like. Trust me. But that’s ok. You don’t have to like it. It is ok to spend time on things and say, “No, this is not what I was wanting.” Then you start over.

We are taught to achieve and to follow directions.

Raise your hand.

You get two weeks of vacation a year.

You have to ask me first if you can do that thing.

You need to put your pronouns in your iPhone, and under your name in Zoom meetings.

You need to see the world clearly, through me and only me.

You need to follow the rules, say the pledge, vote (for who we tell you we like if you want to stay friends).

And by the way…if you don’t do those things, those things you are told to do…you can’t work here, go to the university, or leave the country.

And if you do something I don’t like, I will make sure you can’t access your money. Your bank is not a place of security, it is a place where you are beholden to me!

No!

I want to stop living life like I am struggling to box-breathe.

No person, no parents, no government, no “spiritual” leader knows better than me.

But I also think those so-called leaders don’t want us to be free. It feels powerful to put people in boxes and watch them follow your lead. Intoxicating.

But I am not an opioid fix for somebody. That’s not why God made me.

Neither are you.

Today is my mom’s birthday. She is 82 years old. She and my father have decided to once again, host their annual Christmas party. I helped them get many boxes of decorations down which were distributed around the living room. Mom started decorating, which has been her creative expression for at least 40 years now. But she couldn’t find the pictures of how she did it in the past and this was upsetting her deeply.

I told her all those decorations could be like a palette of paint. She could pick and choose what to use. She could have fun. She didn’t have to use everything. But my suggestions weren’t helping. I think copying the photos of how she had done things in the past gave her a sense of safety. Rules and box breathing can be like that. They are addictive.

But after my session with Clem, and our comment to one another about creativity requiring we do something new and unique, I emerged in the early morning light to greet my mother, who looked me in the eye with a sudden realization.

She told me she was going to allow herself to do her own thing. She was going to decorate without those photos and stop worrying.

Maybe it is time for us all to be free?

But first we have to notice when we are trying to fit into something—into boxes that were only ever meant to stifle our creativity.

Instead, maybe we can breathe like birds with wings, into our root chakra, and see where it takes us?

Blessings dear one, dear reader who I feel reading these words with me…blessings on your journey. Remember, you are God’s prayer. You are light energy. You are embodied creativity. You are made to color outside the lines. Just like me.