Imagine: Passion For World Peace

John Lennon portrays a simple yet powerful song that holds deep meaning which makes it worth taking a closer look at. Through Yoko Ono’s scriptures and Lennon’s passion for world peace, both husband and wife were able to share their message of letting go of the divisions in humanity and to focus on the real matter that makes up the world, getting along with each other. The controversial lyrics provides the overall message of tranquility, harmony, peace, and love which overtime has challenged societies.

Starting in the first stanza, Lennon is aware that ever since childhood, we have been told that there is a heaven and a hell, which is the reason he ask us to imagine the unimaginable: a life that does not consist of heaven and hell. He is also aware that imagine this is difficult but knows it’s doable with effect. His view on the existence of heaven and hell leads us to his second stanza where he ask us to imagine life without religion.

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We were taught about the existence of heaven and hell thanks to religion. However, he takes an approach that many would disagree with: that the world would be a better place with the absence of religion for that it is the cause of most of chaos and division in the world.

In the second stanza, he asks us to imagine a countryless world, where land is not occupied by the government. Lennon is indirectly hitting at the point that wars have been fought out of our pride of patriotism that we are willing to die for our country.

Being one whole nation, would there still be fighting over boundaries? Or would people even have to die for their land? Lennon must think that without the combination of multiple countries and religion, there will be no fighting, only peace.

In his third stanza, Lennon speaks for us all. World peace is a common dream among many people all over the world. However, world peace has no been satisfied due to the lack of commitment and contribution. World peace is not something that can be achieved with one group, it is a common shared interest that everyone must be part of.

In his fourth stanza, Lennon asks us to imagine something a bit more challenging: a non-materialist life. The difficulty of this is letting go of our possession, particularly the things we adore. Lennon sees the uselessness of material things, which makes humans greedy. If we were to to become the opposite of greedy, and share our excess food with those who need it, that’d be one step to end world hunger.

Lennon gives us a challenging task to imagine three unimaginable things: “Imagine there’s no heaven... no countries.... No possessions.” Each thing he ask gets more challenging to imagine. For example, Heaven is only a concept we got from religion, so it seems to be an easy thing to forget about. A country, on the other hand, is something we live in and grew up identifying ourselves with, making this a bit more difficult to imagine the nonexistence of. When it comes to material things such as our electronic devices, jewelry, or even books, it’s not so easy to give up. Lennon suggest that the actual feeling of peace is when we get rid of the things that are most dear to us. If we want to be satisfied with world peace, this is what we should consider doing. All these material objects don’t really belong to us. If we think about it, products are produced through nature. We should not mess with nature, therefore not produce anything that would disturb it. This song shines light through it’s positivity that there is hope for a better human existence.

The conclusion of the song is simple: “And the world will live as one”.The political and musical impact it had on the world is what makes this song so special. Across the map, Lennon has been appreciated to produce a song that calls for peace and unity to all humans.