You may recall a posting I made back in February entitled Good Gift, Charlee Brown. I wrote about the thoughtful and life-affirming gift that little Charlee made on a USPS shipping envelope her mother was sending me. Since then, she asked her mother if she could send another drawing. When I received the query, I was more than happy to be the recipient of another objet d’art from my youngest and most enthusiastic pen pal.
When the item came, I saw that little Charlee regaled me with two treats: Her lovely drawings adorning the manila envelope her mother had sent along and inside, a stencil of a bouquet of flowers Charlee had colored in. What I loved most about it was that she didn’t take great care to follow a prescribed color pattern for the various flowers or leaves. She used the colors that resonated with her. And to paraphrase from Robert Frost’s seminal poem, The Road Not Taken: She took the path less traveled by, and that made all the difference.
Life in and of itself is replete with details, large and small. So small in fact, that they measure down to subatomic particles like quarks or leptons. And like those two examples, they cannot be seen yet we know they exist because they are part of the foundational matter that gives us our shape and meaning in the universe. No, this isn’t a small scientific treatise. But I do want you to see the oft misunderstood brilliance of innocence. In the case of Charlee’s drawings, her vision of life in that moment took shape through her choice of colors; her creative choices on how to represent joy.
Most everything around you is made up of something else. And although the laws of physics are (so far as we know) immutable, how we live life and interact with one another doesn’t have to follow a predefined pattern. It has to follow your version of a pattern, your instinct; pure, unbridled and creative instinct. Life is not designed to be a paint-by-numbers portrait. We paint in broad strokes and with the colors and patterns that suit our choices in life. Go ahead; change the palette and watch what happens. It’s an adventure into the unknown; a voyage of discovery free from the constraints of a life outlined or designed by others. This is why we have senses; to drink in the world around us and sense the best way to paint our life within that world.
So ask yourself this: Do you want to be a dime store painting or a masterpiece? For that answer, I suggest you find the Charlee Browns in your life; they’ll show what to do.
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