Last week (June 1st) was the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I was in Form 1 (Grade 7) when it was released. Didn’t really notice it or appreciate it till a few years later. Looking back after five decades, I realise the songs in the album ask the key questions of life.

One of the most beautiful songs in the album is “She’s Leaving Home” portraying the pain of a dad and mum when their daughter leaves home. It’s a reminder that the soundtrack of life is in a minor key and that to live is to suffer loss; that life is a series of saying goodbyes to people and places. Indeed, the one constant of life is death and even if you live to 64 (“When I’m Sixty-four”) you won’t live forever. The constant of life is death that takes away the ones we love and, finally, takes our lives. What then are we to do?

Well, if death makes life meaningless in the end, then nihilism of some form should be the order of the day, and one logical conclusion of nihilism is suicide.

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
(“Day In The Life”)

But most of us are cowards, or perhaps we still harbour a hope that life has meaning, so we find help to go on living in various ways:

Drugs and other addictions that make us forget. (I know that “With a Little Help from my Friends” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” are ambiguous in their reference to drugs, but when I get “high with a little help from my friends” I may see the fantasy images in “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds?”)
Romance (“Lovely Rita”)
Romantic Optimism (“It’s Getting Better”)
Music and the Arts (The music of the album sung by a group of lonely hearts for lonely hearts.)

Having said all that, the Beatles do try to wake us up from our stupor (“Good Morning, Good Morning”). They challenge us from escaping in denial:

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go
(“Fixing A Hole”)

And they still ask the question:

We were talking
About the love that’s gone so cold
And the people
Who gain the world and lose their soul
They don’t know, they can’t see
Are you one of them?
(“Within You Without You”)

One response:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
(Text: Joseph M. Scriven, 1820–1886
Music: Charles C. Converse, 1832–1918
)

More wishful thinking? The Bible asks the same question, and answers that it is not, because Jesus died and rose again (1 Corinthians 15). And if someone really conquered death, then of course it shifts things into a major key and gives us other songs to sing.