“When you do something beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun, every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”

John Lennon

John Lennon was born on October 9th, 1940. He began writing and drawing at an early age. His father left for a period, and his mother remarried, John living primarily with his mother’s older sister, Mimi. His mother, Julia, did believe in his musical ambitions and bought him his first guitar. She was struck by a car and killed in 1958, two years after John formed his first band, The Quarryman, which evolved into the legendary British rock band, the Beatles. 

Lennon’s songwriting partnership with John McCarthy is one of the most successful in history. He is credited with writing hundreds of songs, including the Beatle’s hits: “Hard Day’s Night,” “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Nowhere man,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “I am the Walrus,” “All you Need is Love,” “Across the Universe,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and many more. 

In His Own Write (1964), a book of poetry, short stories, plays, and drawings, was the first published book by John Lennon. Considered ‘nonsense literature,’ the book was a critical and commercial success, selling around 300,000 copies in Britain. He followed it with A Spaniard in the Works (1965).

On December 8th, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed by Beatles fan Mark David Chapman. 

Skywriting by Word of Mouth, his last published work, was published posthumously in 1986 and includes his autobiography titled “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and an afterword written by his widow Yoko Ono. Lennon mentioned in a Playboy interview in 1980 that he had written 200 pages of work during his 5-year retirement from music after the birth of his son Sean. The manuscript was stolen in 1982, then recovered in 1986.  

Lesson from Lennon:

Personal freedom and expression were paramount to Lennon, and he was always searching spiritually and creatively for inspiration. He was just forty-years old when he was killed, but he left behind a lifetime of work that now generations have looked to for solace and motivation.