I’ve never before shared or recommended a YouTube video.  But now I recommend that you watch this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPJL488cfRw  . 

I read the newspapers this morning and was left, as usual, with a leaden feeling of despair at a culture and civic sphere now dominated by superficiality, ignorance, mendacity, arrogance, coarseness and incivility.   The price of engaging with the public sphere, has been ­– at least in my case – an increasingly dark view of humanity and its prospects.

Returning to my desk, I found a page I had torn from a recent Economist describing a performance by 18-year-old South Korean pianist Lim Yun-chan of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Van Cliburn competition in Fort Worth, Texas.   The video now has nearly 6 million views.   I just watched it.  The performance left in me tears (as it did the conductor).

Some of those tears sprang from the sheer beauty of the sound.   But there was something else – a message that the music didn’t need words to convey.  It reminded me of the infinite potential of humanity.   Of our potential to push the boundaries of achievement further and further.  Of our potential for nobility, subtleness, generosity, and imagination.   And of all that can be accomplished when we tear down the walls of tribalism, in this case to have a young pianist from South Korea play music written by a dead Russian, conducted by a woman born in New York, before a wildly enthusiastic Texas audience.   

I hope this brightens your day, as it did mine.