Inside the lines...

"To think or act in accordance with set rules. Likened to the way a child is encouraged to neatly color within the lines of a coloring book" 

- https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/color+inside+the+lines 

Lines are all around us. There are lines in coloring books. There are lines on maps. There are lines on the pavement, between houses, at the grocery store - some days it seems all you see are lines. Lines can be good; like the ones that tell us where it is safe or dangerous. Some lines are natural, like rivers and mountains. Some are man-made, like fences and roads and voting districts. And some are a combination of the two, like gender, race, and age. As humans, we are taught to respect the lines we find and recognize the power of what these lines represent. The value we place on the lines depends on the context, purpose and motivation of the line makers, even when they are ourselves.

Lines keep chaos at bay. Imagine a checkout register at a grocery with no line. Which customer has precedence to be served at any given time. How do we decide who goes first and who goes last? That's right, lines are not only symbolic tools to segment a given subject into regions, they are also directional - vectors one might say. I always felt sorry for the kids in any given class with last names starting with w,x,y,or z because when asked to line up for most activities, the class lined up alphabetically and they were relegated to be last. There was the occasional teacher who would shake things up a bit and say for them to line up in reverse alphabetical order, but everyone knew that was going against the natural vector. So the checkout line is a first-in first-out perpetual vector of customers flowing through in an orderly fashion. If someone attempts to breach the line, it better be a spouse or partner of someone already in the line or the public outcry will be loud and forceful. The line gives us that right, that power as both the group and as individuals.

Lines make good neighbors. Well, fences are lines aren't they? And, fences come in all shapes and sizes. Small white picket fences are a formal indication of this is my castle and that is yours. Heavy chain link fences with barbed wire keep the bad (prisoners) from the good (free citizens). And, the walls separate east and west, country from country, culture from culture. Sometimes the fences are invisible, like the firewalls in your computer network. While other times they are highly visible, like the walls of a stadium allowing the paying audience to view and event while everyone else remains outside.

Lines allow us to connect with one another. Our relationship network is built upon drawing lines of similarity (or sometimes difference) with others. These lines may indicate family, friends, acquaintances, business relationships, sporting teams, schools, and on and on. Based on social media one might think our personal worth is based on how many lines we have. Interestingly enough, research has shown that as humans, we can only maintain up to 150 lines at any given time. This number, also known as Dunbar's number (British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 1990, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number), euphemistically says it is "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." The reality is that on a daily basis, most of us are luck to manage 30 to 50 relationships. This number being due to the most basic line of all - time. There are only so many seconds (lines on a clock) to spread between body, work, and people. What it all comes down to is, presuming a group of 30, there are 960 seconds available to each relationship or 16 minutes per day per person. Now that is some serious quality time if you ask me. Half a lunch. A quarter of a TV show. You might get in a game of checkers. Or maybe a quick coffee. But, not much else. And that is for a network of 30. So, if you have 1000 "Facebook friends", they are getting less than a second of your valuable time per day. Maybe you should draw the line at 30.

Without lines there would be no STEM. No blueprints for houses or machines. No writing. No telephone or internet. No laws defining right from wrong. No hopscotch or baseball or fishing. No identifying with others who are like us. We need lines to define who we are.

I think the definition I find most amusing, however, when it comes to the rationale of the coloring book and coloring inside the lines, was penned in 1947 by Viktor Lowenfeld in his book Creative and Mental Growth, "Although no one will admit it, one of the main reasons for using these workbooks may well be that they give the classroom teacher a chance to have some rest." And, so it may be that the greatest purpose of lines may be that with lines we remove the daily burden of organizing society by simply saying, "can't you see the line?"