Remember those connect-the-dots-and-colour books? Pages, filled with dots and numbers. Connect the dotted numbers with a line, and an image arose. Made to add some self-confidence in children who were not so talented in drawing I guess.
Even without linking the dots, you could usually already see what kind of image would be exposed when done connecting those dots. A cat playing with a ball of wool, a boat with a little boy being the captain or an airplane with a bear as pilot.
I remember always being a bit disappointed with the outcome of my coproduced drawing.
For it was never as perfect as I mentally pictured it. I longed for one to be just as flawless as the drawings in a colour book. But they never turned out like this, with their cracky lines.
So sometimes the rebel in me arose. What would happen if I, instead of honorably connecting dot number 8 with dot number 9, connecting it with dot number 14? Or, even more revolutionary, after that, connecting dot number 14 with dot number 2? Then, a piece of authentic art appeared. Or so I perceived it. Something unique arose.
“Changing the dots can be scary but behind fear awaits freedom.”
I think in life, we also tend to follow the dots that are pointed out for
for us. And that often, we are afraid to change them. Afraid to change those dots.
Is it because we feel safe with our familiar ways of acting and reacting?
Is it because we want to live up to what others expect from us?
A bit of both I guess.
But, by doing what we always do, by acting and reacting the way we always act and react
we can get stuck. Stuck in our own lives. And, the more we clone our ways of doing,
the more confined we get in our so carefully designed identity. It can become our prison.
Changing the dots can be scary. As it will change our direction. Brining us to unfamiliar places.
However, it is in those unfamiliar places where development and growth await us.
Behind fear awaits freedom.
Do you dare to change your dots?
Written by Anne Soffer
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