“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” Mary Oliver
During one of my most recent meditations, I got the nudge to begin writing poetry again. It’s something I’ve done therapeutically ever since I knew what a poem was (and I’ve got the notebooks full of angsty boy poems to prove it). I even studied it in college and had a few poems published.
But I’ve really let my creative practice go. I feel creative in a lot of what I do on a daily basis, but I haven’t had something set aside just for me, just for the sake of creative expression. And dare I say, just for fun!
Perhaps you can relate. When was the last time you created just for fun? Just for you?
These things get put on the back burner because with all of the things we need to do, it’s hard to justify. But studies are now proving what we have already felt: creative expression is vital for a healthy mind and soul.
For inspiration for my own practice, I’ve been reading one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, and I want to leave you with one of her poems.
I’ll let the poem speak for itself, but perhaps it could inspire you, as well. Perhaps it could be just the thing to call you home and follow the path within.
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The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do– determined to save the only life you could save.