John Lennon and Bruce Lee: fellow icons, artists, and philosophers

By Thomas Lee
Editorial Director of “We Are Bruce Lee”

John Lennon Memorial in New York City’s Central Park. Photo by Hannah Bartman

John Lennon and Bruce Lee never met. In fact, you rarely hear their names in the same sentence.

And why would you? One was an English singer-songwriter who led one of the most famous rock bands in history. The other was a Chinese American martial artist and movie star.

But the two global icons shared so much in common that you have to wonder if some higher power put Lennon and Lee on the Earth at the same time for a reason.

Both men would have turned 80 this year (Lennon was about a month older). Beyond their full-time gigs, both men were artists and philosophers during a time of great social and political upheaval.

Both men were ardent humanists, who believed people could change the world by realizing their individual potential. Both men had quick tempers. Both men expressed ambivalence about money and fame; they welcomed such things only as means to fulfilling their greater goals.

Both men accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. And both men died tragic deaths, well ahead of their time.

Yet the paths Lennon and Lee took to their destinies were decidedly different and worth exploring.

Courtesy of Bruce Lee Enterprises, LLC

Lee was supremely self-confident. Even as an unknown student and kung fu instructor in Seattle, he told people that he was destined to do great things. It was this confidence that provided Lee with the resilience he needed to overcome setbacks and failures.

And there were plenty of them. Lee's career in Hollywood was mostly a big disappointment, which is why he moved back to Hong Kong to pursue a movie career. In fact, Lee only found success in the latter years of his life; he didn't even live long enough to see his masterpiece Enter the Dragon hit the movie screens.

Meanwhile, The Beatles, led by a 22-year-old Lennon, experienced their first hit in 1962 with the single Love Me Do. Over the next eight years, the band enjoyed an unprecedented level of success and fame.

Yet Lennon during this time was hardly self-assured. According to Gary Tillery, author of The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon, Lennon was suffering a full-blown existential crisis in the latter half of the decade:

"He was growing more alienated at the same time millions went to sleep envious of him. To his close friend Pete Shotton he confided: 'The more I have, the more I see, and the more experience I get, the more confused I become as to who I am, and what the hell life is all about.'

Unfulfilled by material success, he had stumbled into what psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl called ‘the existential vacuum,’ the state in which individuals 'are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves.'"

Lennon tried to work out his angst by reading the Bible, studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and doing drugs, most notably LSD.

It was 1967 when Lennon wrote All You Need Is Love that he found his true purpose, Tillery argued:

"It was in his power to improve humanity...Lennon’s message in the lyrics was that those who want to go out and improve the world would be wiser to first go inside themselves. If we first do what no one else can do, transform ourselves, then we can positively influence those around us, and ultimately, like ripples spreading out from a stone dropped in a pond, change the world."

Lee believed in similar things. In order for society to achieve peace and prosperity, humans must intensely focus on themselves and fulfill their individual potential.

So while Lee created art to fulfill a destiny that he had previously identified, Lennon used his success and fame to find meaning and life's purpose.

A John Lennon mural in Bedminster, Bristol, UK. Photo by Nick Fewings

Though Lee and Lennon both wanted to use their platforms to inspire and motivate people, Lee did not march in protests nor openly speak about politics and social issues. He believed his work as a martial arts instructor and movie star spoke for itself.

With songs like Revolution, Imagine, and Give Peace A Chance, Lennon was unabashedly political, so much so that President Nixon tried to deport him. He expertly used his fame to attract media attention; recall his famous honeymoon "bed-ins" in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1967 to oppose the Vietnam War and promote world peace.

Lennon's high-profile activism is probably why people more easily recall his campaigns for peace and love. Yet both men strongly believed in the power of humans to change the world for the better through self-awareness and self-improvement.

That in order to affect the many, one must first look deep within themselves.