What the World Needs

   Driving through Emerald Isle last week, I heard an interview with Jackie DeShannon on Terry Groce’s program on NPR. (That’s on the radio, folks, down among the low numbers). I hadn’t thought of this singer in years. Terry played Jackie’s hit record, “What the World Needs Now is Love,” a Burt Bacharach/Hal David song from 1965.

   I had to stop the car. The song broke my heart, and I cried. How foolish, I thought, but Jackie’s voice and that wonderful song loosed a flood of memories so intense, I lost all hope of maintaining composure. The song was an anthem of my youth in the 60s, and it brought back feelings that I had not visited in so long.
   We the “love generation” dared to believe that we could change the world. We thought we could bring peace to a country torn by war and generational strife. We thought we could bring love “not for just for some, but for everyone.”
   The music of that time, including Jackie’s song, fired the engines of change. From the quiet strength of protest songs and folk music to the relentless beat of Crosby, Stills, and Nash and the Rolling Stones, we knew, through our music, that we were a generation united and we had the power to change the world.
   For me, “What the World Needs Now,” embodied the music and the message that lived in my heart. It expressed what I wanted for my life and for the world. Jackie’s earthy voice builds from quiet statement to passionate pleading. I hear in her singing the hope we felt; the glory of dreams, and the unabashed belief of youth that anything is possible.
   Later, I walked out to the beach and stood looking over the ocean. It hasn’t changed. Waves crest and fall and travel to the shore. Delighted children venture out into the water, looking to watchful parents for their courage. It is a scene out of time… lacking, of course, the transistor radios that were our standard issue.
   But something is different: the songs have changed and so have I. I no longer believe that anything is possible or that I have the power to make it happen. We stopped a war, but it was just replaced by others. Our lives are stressed and angry, and we did not unite everyone through love.
   We, as a generation, hoped big. We marched and carried signs. We grew our hair long and argued with our parents, demanding the right to be different and to create a new order. But we did not change the world. To borrow a phrase, "We weren't defeated by the man, we became him."
   We failed our mission, and it breaks my heart to hear the song that reminds me so strongly of what we felt and what we believed.
   I don’t know what dream young people carry in their hearts these days. I wouldn’t presume. What’s peace and love anyway in the face of global warming? I know only that song can still awaken my heart and perhaps again inspire me to bring a little love to this world.
   “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”