"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
Out of context, this quote has the power to remind us of the importance of our creative urges, mysterious and ‘unnecessary’ as they might feel to us at times. The desire we have to paint, dance, sing, write – whatever channel we might choose – is often the desire to feel uplifted, inspired in the truest sense: to breathe, profoundly and purposefully. To feel fully alive.
But the full Mary Oliver quote goes even further to explain why it is that this impulse must often take the form of surrender or sacrifice, and why we often need to retreat from the world, even briefly, to aid the process.
“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. 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.”