Completion in Coloring

When I was a kid, I always insisted on taking all of the paper off of crayons. Taking each shred of paper off until the smoothness of the crayon was all that was left between my fingers. My mother teased, I only liked "naked" crayons.

Another oddity about my coloring habits, was that I always insisted on coloring coloring books from the first page to the last page. No skipping. As if each coloring book told a story that needed to be consumed in order.

It was not until adulthood, when coloring for adults became a new rage, that I reevaluated my stringent coloring book routine. Why not color whichever pages I wanted? Why not skip around? Why not start in the back? *gasp. But believe it or not, this simple act of defiance, to my own self-imposed coloring rules, was profoundly freeing for me. I was doing something that was supposed to bring me joy - and I had made it a chore. Something that should have allowed me to de-stress was tangled in the "shoulds" or "have-tos" that governed so much of the rest of my life. Even in my leisure, I restricted my own freedom.

Why? I'm a rule-follower, a "good girl". For the most part. I like to please others, I like to color inside the lines - literally. Except for my incessant cursing and my inability follow the speed limit, nearly everything else in my life follows prescribed rules of "appropriate behavior."

There's a duality to me, to, I think, all of us. To the rebellious spirit that lives inside of us, and the fear of allowing that rebel to breathe too much air and take over. The Breakfast Club philosophy of - "If he gets up, we'll all get up, it'll be anarchy!" But what if we let a little more rebellion sneak in? A little more anarchy? A little more freedom to find the fun outside of rules and expectations? I wonder what kind of beauty could be created in the chaos of freedom.

(A coloring puzzle that took ages to assemble before I colored it...)