Memorial Day: Refreshing & Restoring Our Creative Spirits

In the United States, it’s Memorial Day weekend. A Day of Remembrance, where we honor those who have paid the ultimate price for freedom.

It’s also become a social holiday, marking the beginning of a summer state of mind. For many, the holiday weekend marks the first time this year that they’ve been able to rest or simply… breathe.

All holidays allow us to revel in creative living. We honor the sacrifice of others and lay flowers and wreaths on the graves of our ancestors. We gather with loved ones for shared meals and mutual celebration.

We also take the time to consider the way these sacrifices have lead to our creativity, for how would we create if we were not free to do so, if freedoms did not inform our lives.

As a child, Memorial Day Weekend marked the end of the school year, a double celebration of freedom. It meant playing in sprinklers, eating ice cream, reading lots of books, going to the swimming pool, and finding myself SO BORED. And this boredom always led to finding new ways to refresh my creativity.

In honor of this holiday, we won’t be offering you a new poem, story, or essay, but a collection of a dozen gems of wisdom on creative living and honoring the need to pause as we refresh our bodies and restore our creative souls.

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”
– Ray Bradbury

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”
–Charles M. Schulz

“People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills . . . There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. . . . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”
–Marcus Aurelius

“Give light and people will find the way.”
–Ella Baker

“From time to time, one must release the grime built up inside them to to free their emotions like the ocean.”
― Suzy Kassem

“Ideas and philosophies have a shelf-life. They must be kept fresh and renewed or they will spoil. If left unattended, the same ideas and philosophies that once nourished you and helped you grow can poison you and make you sick. Become aware of new ideas that can refresh your way of life and be open to the fact that your old ideas and philosophies can work for you for some time, but when the shelf-life has passed, those ideas and philosophies could also harm you.”
― Steve Maraboli

“Patience is also a form of action.”
–Auguste Rodin

“Relish love in your old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!”
–Leo Buscaglia

“Games lubricate the body and mind.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
–Rumi

“In dealing with those who are undergoing great suffering, if you feel ‘burnout’ setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best, for the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself. The point is to have a long-term perspective.”
–Dalai Lama

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
– Lucille Ball