Local opinion: A timeless anthem for compassion in difficult times

While driving one recent day, I heard a song on my radio that took me back to the late Sixties. “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” was a ballad recorded by The Hollies, an English rock group. I listened anew to the words that expressed brotherly love, sharing burdens, and caring for one another’s welfare. It was the era of Woodstock and free love, as it was called, but also a time of national turmoil and a generational divide. There were anti-war protests and riots by young people in the U.S. over escalating warfare in Vietnam.

Few other popular songs at the time conveyed so well the idea of carrying an emotional load for a fellow traveler. (John Lennon’s “Imagine” wasn’t released until 1971.) This ideal of caring for people in need was and is today a gift, even though our final destination is unknowable. The lyrics are simple and spiritual in the way The Golden Rule is spiritual: giving without necessity or the expectation of getting in return.

“So on we go; his welfare is of my concern, no burden is he to bear, we'll get there.

For I know he would not encumber me; he ain't heavy, he's my brother.”

As I listened to the song and drove along Broadway Blvd. toward my home, I noticed someone sleeping on the shaded grass in Reid Park. In the median at Alvernon sat a person holding a cardboard sign which probably read “Anything helps. God bless.” I thought about efforts by our city and county leaders to address this growing challenge of helping those who are without shelter while respecting the needs and rights of homeowners and renters. I thought about the painful divide in society between Left and Right, those shorthand labels that are used to separate us by our presumed political beliefs.

I think the American lyricist Bob Russell described in these words a core belief system based on positivity, gladness, and shared burdens. As I learned from Google, Russell died of lymphoma in 1970, at age 55, only a few months after the Hollies’ song was released in 1969. Perhaps this was his love poem to the rest of us—an ideal he hoped we would dedicate ourselves to.

If you hear this song, I hope you’ll think of it as a hymn to our better selves. Conditions for all of us are improved by those who embrace shared responsibility for the world we will leave behind at the end of the long, long road.

“… If I'm laden at all, I'm laden with sadness that everyone's heart isn't filled with the gladness of love for one another. It's a long, long road from which there is no return, while we're on the way to there, why not share?” –Bob Russell