Last June, Oliver Schroer, an
extraordinary talent and great
musician, passed away following
a two-year battle with leukemia. He left
behind two things: a musical legacy that
will endure for decades to come, and an
extraordinary testament that he wrote
during his final days and shared with his
friends and fans through a series of emails.
Oliver wrote about finding meaning and
joy in his life through his music. He urged
everyone to get involved in creative activity,
and become truly engaged in life.
“If you spend your life involved in
creative things, activities that feed you and
make you happy,” he wrote, “then when you
are in a position like I am [dying of cancer],
you can amplify those things and get a lot
of enjoyment from them. But if you would
wait until you are in a position like mine,
and THEN try to start something, it will feel
artificial and pointless. So I can only exhort
you to be as engaged in your
lives as possible while you can,
particularly the creative side.”
Knowing that he was writing mere days
before he left this world, Oliver’s insights
into living artfully are truly inspiring.
(www.oliverschroer.com/leukemia.htm.)
It is my hope that you will find equally
inspiring connections between Oliver’s
words, and the people you’ll read about
in this issue, who are leading artful lives
through creativity and purpose. They’ve
made often-difficult life choices which
allow them to seek a path of self-awareness
and self-expression while they juggle the
demands of modern life.
We can all live artful – and by extension
healthy – lives. We can start by recognizing
that so much of what we do involves
creativity. Preparing a delicious meal and
serving it to a group of treasured friends,
for example. Going for a hike through the
