Today would have been the 72nd birthday of John Lennon. He was the most controversial and political Beatle, having rebelled against the very things that made him famous. A deeply flawed man, Lennon was guilty of being an absentee father to his first son and a philandering husband, in addition to a drug abuser. They say the best creative genius comes from difficult lives and I believe much of his behavior stemmed from being basically abandoned by both his mother and father as a child. Many people who were abandoned as children grow up to engage in self-destructive behavior as he did. Regardless of his flaws, he was a musical genius, an artist, and an activist who brought out ideas into the world that are still relevant three decades after his unconscionable murder.

I have noticed that people still either love him or hate him with very little middle ground even today. He died within two weeks of my grandfather, and I was born 14 months later, which means two men who have great influence over me were men I never got to know. Some of the first sounds I ever heard in this world as an infant were songs written and performed by Lennon as well as the Lennon/McCartney writing partnership. I’m a 30-year-old woman who hears his voice and reacts as if a lullaby from my childhood is coming back to me. Music has the ability to affect everything in the world around us and I have been heavily influenced by this man. For that reason, I celebrate his life today on the 72nd anniversary of his birth.