Imagine…

Hello, dear friends.

I am inspired, sobered, and riveted by these words from Arundhati Roy, an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997, the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author.  As a political activist involved in justice-seeking for human rights and environmental rights, her below words have infiltrated my heart and my mind:

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel

and brought the world to a halt

 like nothing else could. 

Our minds are still racing back and forth, 

longing for a return to “normality”, 

trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. 

But the rupture exists. 

And in the midst of this terrible despair, 

it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. 

Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. 

This one is no different. 

It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. 

We can choose to walk through it, 

dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, 

our avarice, 

our data banks and dead ideas, 

our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. 

Or we can walk through lightly, 

with little luggage, 

ready to imagine another world. 

And ready to fight for it.

~~~

I am speechless.  

I feel most moved by these words:

“…..ready to imagine

Another world,

And ready

To fight for it.

~~~

Check out these words, written by another genius and visionary who walked amongst us.  Even if you think you know the words, take a few moments, and read them:

~~~

“Imagine”
(by John Lennon)

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world… You…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

~~~

So profound.  The world’s peace anthem, simple and digestible, normalized over the years, yet filled with challenges beyond convention, challenges that ride piggyback on the soothing and repetitive piano.

John could have written this song today, rather than in 1971, its relevance dropping deeper and deeper roots.

What a bundle of contradictions was this man, with his hand-painted Rolls Royce, as he urges us toward no possessions.  Yet the sincerity and the depth of this song becomes more authentic and available as the world marches onward.  

Somehow, for me, John contains the contradictions, almost making the song more alive and more relevant.  I, too, despite my attachment to self-gifting from Amazon and stuff, I, too, choose to lean toward less and less, fewer and fewer things.

John lands it; meeting us where we are, leaning toward the possibilities.

~~~

The world will live as one.

~~~

And now, let us listen and imagine, with Our John: