testing boundaries | Dare Boldly

I cut corners last night.

I know. I know. Bad idea. If one believes the idiom, cutting corners leads to disaster, or at least a poor result.

I hadn’t intended to do it. I thought I could get away without cutting corners, but, after cutting one corner, it quickly became evident, cutting corners was necessary.

Which got me thinking about idioms and taking things at face value.

Cutting corners began appearing in print in the 1850s. It was originally used in reference to navigation with other uses in reference to riders following hounds and the ‘lure’ in the hunt versus taking shortcuts. Mark Twain used it in reference to a gondola in 1869 but there are many references to it even before that. (Source)

I have never questioned the wisdom of the advice to not cut corners. On the surface, not cutting corners is a good thing. It keeps me on the path well-known, the route most travelled.

But what about taking risks? Exploring new paths? Testing uncharted waters?

Sometimes, you have to cut corners to discover a new way.

Like the corners I was cutting last night. They were on the programs I am creating for our wedding. Originally, I thought I could get away with leaving the corners straight. After testing one with cut corners versus straight, it was apparent that the cut corners give the programs a more finished look.

Except, I’d already completed 16 programs. When I’d started making them I’d considered cutting the corners but decided they were okay left straight. And they were, but…

I don’t want just ‘ok’. I want polished.

Not cutting them in the first place created more work in the long run. I had to carefully do each page individually, after I’d put the programs together.

16 x 5 pages each program x 4 corners each page = 320 corners versus (16 x 5 pages cut as one) x 4 corners = 64

Had I begun with cutting corners in the beginning, I could have cut in bulk, saving myself considerable time without impacting the look of the final product. Fortunately, I’m only 1/3 of the way finished the programs. I’ll definitely cut the corners in bulk going forward!

Which brings me back to not testing things I believe to be true only to discover the truth I thought was true, may not be so.

I didn’t start painting until I was in my mid-forties.

I’d always told myself, I am a writer. I have no artistic abilities. When I began painting on a whim one day with my eldest daughter I discovered the ‘truth’ I’d believed all of my life until then wasn’t true. Never having really tested my belief though, I couldn’t know its limitations. That day when I set out to paint with Alexis, my intention was to spend time with her doing something she loved. In the process, I discovered not only did I have talent, I love painting too.

Now, I could have gone through the rest of my life and been quite content with where I was at. But imagine…

Because I love painting, two years ago I built a studio in our basement so I could have my own creative space in our home. That space has been a gift. In that space the muse stirs me to places I can’t imagine until I set myself free to explore new ideas, fresh takes on the tried and true and even, to cut corners.

Break Free
Mixed media on canvas
30″ x 30″
©2015 Louise Gallagher

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,”

BY MOTHER GOOSE

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Source: The Dorling Kindersley Book of Nursery Rhymes (2000) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176327

A bird will never learn to fly if it stays in the nest and never risks falling. A mother bird knows her offspring must fly free of her sheltering wings. It is the call of nature.

A child will never learn it has the capacity to fly freely if the mother holds on too tightly. We must teach them they can fly, even when we fear they will fall. It is the call of love.

The same is true for ‘the inner child’. The child who feared thunderstorms, snakes and the boogeyman, must learn as an adult that it is free of childhood fears by testing the boundaries of how far it can go today, free of the calling of the past.

We will never learn to break free of our comfort zones if we stay inside the boundary of our fear.

Breaking free is scary. The known fills our vision, luring us back into the comfort of what we are familiar with, those things we tell ourselves that keep us safe from falling.

The unknown looms large upon the horizon, calling us to test the boundaries, to break through the walls of what we believe keeps us safe from falling, just so we can see how far we can go.

It can be terrifying to step outside the walls of our secure and predictable lives to travel the unknown territory of our dreams. Even though we have a sense that the possibility of great reward lies out there, beyond what we know as our life today, we hesitate, make excuses, procrastinate for fear, out there, in that strange and unknown land of living our dreams, we might fall, get hurt, face failure, lose our way.

Frightened of what we cannot know until we attempt it, we negative fortune-tell our way into holding back from stepping forward. To make sense of our fear, we rhyme off our long list of predictions of all that can go, might go, will most definitely go wrong if we risk stepping out from beneath the shelter of our tried and true.

A baby bird will never fly free if it stays trapped within its shell.

We will never know how much we’re capable of if we stay trapped within the limiting beliefs we tell ourselves to keep us safe from falling.

Imagine if Humpty Dumpty never fell. Or, imagine if the all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had been able to put him back together again. He wouldn’t have been the same anyway. He’d have been all cracked up!

Go ahead. Crack the egg. Let Humpty have a great fall. He might like being all cracked up. Or better yet, he may discover he didn’t need the king’s men and horses anyway because the freedom of breaking free of his shell is worth the risk of breaking open and living life off the wall.