Years later, when a friend asked him what was the best lyric he ever wrote, he answered without hesitation; “All you need is Love.”
My favorite of his profundities is, “When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.”
He also said, “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer, with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory, and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others, or to our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness, and open-hearted vision, of people who embrace life.”
His vision: “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
John would have turned 76 years old today.
