Find the Light in a Man

Whenever I’ve told people that I “journal”, I feel most assume that means something boarding on a “diary.” With the assumption that it elicits images of adolescent girls divulging their deepest adolescent thoughts, so men will pivot to “journaling” to avoid the raised eyebrows. But the idea is highly misleading and misses the point entirely, because expressing oneself should never carry negative connotations. For instance, my own journal has never been a space for personal confessions, were I am dishing out intimate thoughts meant for no other eyes but my own. No, no, my essays have always focused on ideas, first and foremost, ideas that excite me to the point that I must express what I think.

In that light, several years ago I came across a simple piece of wisdom that I feel absolutely compelled to share here. It occurred while reading a book by a French journalist name Micha Assayas titled, “In Conversation with Bono”, and as the title suggests, the book consists of conversations that took place between the two, conducted at varying points along Bono’s ever-rising trajectory. The book hit the shelves in 2005, which I snatched up immediately, of course, since Bono is easily one of my lyrical, and even intellectual idols, joining the company of Lennon and Dylan without hesitation. It’s a rare thing for musicians to be actively searched out for their thoughts on world affairs, and for good reasons, but Paul Hewson, aka Bono, is one of them, because journalists have over the years that he is intelligent, well informed, and highly articulate, so he’s paid the entrance fee into areas well beyond Pop music.

The best example of his global “clout” occurred in the late 1990s when he decided to “spend the currency” of his fame (his phrase) to do whatever was needed to raise awareness, and funds, for the raging AID’s epidemic in Africa. At the time Africa was a dumpster fire of problems, and what made the situation especially dire was the massive debts they owed to the West. Due to that financial burden, African nations had very little maneuvering room to help for their people. At a time, their houses was on fire and all they had in response was a garden hose.

The campaign was inspired by an ancient Jewish theme called “the Year of Jubilee”, when Jewish lenders would forgive the debts owed to them every 50 years, as a goodwill gesture for those less fortunate. That radical idea, in the hands of Bono’s crystalline imagination, equated to the poorest nations receiving some debt relief from the richest nations. And with a Jubilee year approaching (2000), he made it his mission to petition America and other European nations to wipe away hundreds of millions of debts so those countries could then use the savings to build infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals, and their urgent need to get control of the epidemic. The West had the medicine, but apparently not the empathy, which meant that Bono would have to hit the political circuit with the task of convincing skeptical politicians to open up their checkbooks.

Allow me to frame this properly by stating the obvious; this would not be a stadium filled with tens of thousands of adoring fans, but rather awkward meetings with highly suspicious politicians who felt no obligation or interest in writing a blank check to support poor, often corrupt nations that added no economic value, and certainly not at the urging of a starry-eyed singer. In the US particularly, where the likes of Jesse Helms, the staunch, hard-core conversative controlling Congress’ purse strings, the prospects were not at all encouraging. Just imagine the setup, an Irish “Rock Star” voluntarily stepping into a very public, conservative “lion’s den”, all in order to convince Helms, a white southerner to push through legislation to help poor Africans on the other side of the planet, based on nothing more than the strength of his the argument and personal charm.

And he succeeded. He was able to secure nearly half a billion dollars from the US alone and he accomplished it by using a principle he learned about from Martin Luther King. To explain what that means, I’ll need to circle back to Assayas’ book and allow Bono to describe how he learned of King’s inspiring approach to cut through disagreements.

As Bono tells it, he found himself speaking with Harry Belafonte at some fundraiser. Belafonte, in addition to being a popular black singer and actor at the time, was also an activist and trusted member within the civil rights movement and knew Dr. King personally. At this introduction, Bono apparently realized the unique opportunity it presented and intended to learn something inspiring about his idol (MLK) that wasn’t available to the general public.

At Bono’s urging, Belafonte told him that in 1961, something occurred that would drastically test the civil rights movement and threatened to derail all the progress that had been made up to that point. President Kennedy had just appointed his little brother “Bobby” as the Attorney General of the United States, a controversy in itself, but it also worried the Civil Rights leadership because it was rumored that the younger Kennedy did not support the civil rights movement.

Dr. King listen patiently while the others made point after point about how the young Kennedy stood in their way, and that he represented a major threat to their progress. Dr. King, evidently frustrated at the pessimism, slammed his hand down on the table to silence them, and asked those at the meeting, “are you telling me that none of you can think of one good thing to say about this man?” To which they all said no, reiterating the young Kennedy would negate all the progress they had made. Then MLK closed the meeting saying that they would not meet again until they could find something positive about Bobby Kennedy.

Well, when they came back together two weeks later, Dr. King was told they had learned that Kennedy was a very devout Catholic and was particularly close to his local Priest. King heard that and smiled, saying “That is where we will go. Our movement will pass through that relationship”, then finished with an amazing line, “Find the light in a man, and proceed from there.”

I read that and was stunned at its sheer eloquence, if not also its utility. And as it turned out, that was precisely how the Civil Rights movement gained the government’s backing, as Bobby Kennedy came to agree with the plight of African Americans and defended civil rights with all his constitutional authority.

With the same inspiration, Bono was able to find the same starting point with Helm’s and the other politicians he needed to convince. In Helm’s case, Bono knew that he was a devout Christian, like himself, so he engaged Helm’s on that level by convincing him that the AIDS plight in Africa was no different than the Leprosies found throughout the Bible; that ‘this’ moment called for a Biblical response, equating the needs of Africa’s poor with the same moral proposition. His achievement is seldom mentioned now, but in real terms, Bono is directly responsible for saving thousands of lives. With that in mind, try to think of another Rock Star, any of them, who put more skin in the game to help make the world a better place.