Preface:
We seldom stop to consider how much of our own prosperity depends upon the people around us.
From our neighbours and villages to our towns, counties, nations and ultimately our world, we are connected by countless acts of enterprise, kindness, cooperation and mutual dependence.
Yet in pursuing our individual desires, often quite reasonably, we may overlook the consequences our choices have for others.
The Spectrum of Harmony II is a reflection on those connections, the prosperity we share, and the responsibilities that accompany belonging.
Perhaps, in thinking a little more about one another, we might discover how much we stand to gain together.
The Path to Self-Sustenance
A Reflection on Prosperity, Neighbourliness and the Things We Owe One Another
I. Our Neighbour
There lived a man beside another,
A fence between, a hedge to bother.
Each tended proudly to his own,
His little kingdom, of bricks and stone.
One winter’s night, the power went down,
No lights, no heat, across the town.
A knock, a candle, logs to spare,
A neighbour standing, simply there.
And in the warmth of borrowed flame,
Two separate households felt the same.
For all the walls that marked their ground,
Their comforts rested on those around.
II. Our Village
The butcher knew his farmer’s name,
The baker knew from whence his flour came.
The carpenter, with his weathered hands,
Made tables built for years to stand.
But down the road, there’s a tempting sight,
A supermarket, that gleams bright.
Its prices low, its shelves immense,
Its bargains making perfect sense.
And so the villagers, quite content,
Saved their pennies as they went.
Until one day, the butcher’s door closed.
his trade was there no more.
The baker followed, then the smith,
And something else departed with
Those familiar faces, the skills and trades,
The quiet wealth that the village made.
For every penny wisely saved,
Another livelihood was shaved.
And what seemed cheap upon the shelf
Had costs beyond the price itself.
III. Our Town
A town is more than streets and shops,
Its factories, markets, chimney tops.
Its workshops, schools and working hands,
The enterprise on which it stands.
The plumber’s son became an engineer,
The joiner’s daughter chose a new career.
The teacher taught, the builder built,
And none need carry needless guilt
For wanting comfort, wealth or gain,
A better house, a windowpane.
Ambition was no wicked thing,
For enterprise made others sing.
But when the town forgot its trade,
And bought what distant hands had made,
The workshops fell, the skills grew thin,
And fewer youngsters ventured in.
Then someone asked, with some surprise,
Why empty shops met weary eyes.
Why children left, why streets grew still,
Why nothing stood upon the hill.
The answer wasn’t hard to find,
Though seldom foremost in the mind:
A town that ceases making things
May lose the wealth that making brings.
IV. Our County
Beyond the town, the fields unfold,
Where generations tilled the mould.
The farmer, miller, merchant, smith,
Each shared a world of give and gift.
The village fed the bustling town,
The town sent tools and wagons down.
The county’s roads and rivers bore
The fruits of labour, more and more.
And though each parish had its pride,
And grumbled at the other side,
They prospered most when they could see
Their fortunes grew collectively.
For wealth is neither fixed nor still,
Nor something hoarded on a hill.
It grows through work, through skill and trade,
Through things imagined, built and made.
And what one neighbour cannot do,
Another may bring into view.
The strongest roots, the tallest tree,
Depend upon the soil beneath.
V. Our Nation
And now the circle wider grows,
Beyond the county’s fields and its roads.
A nation built of countless hands,
Of villages, towns and its lands.
Its bridges, ships, its mills and trains,
Its hospitals and country lanes.
Its science, music, law and art,
Each born of someone’s working heart.
We speak with pride of what we’ve gained,
Of freedoms won and rights maintained.
Yet seldom pause to contemplate
The countless lives that built our state.
The men who forged, the women who taught,
The generations who worked and thought.
Who left us more than they possessed
And hoped their children would be blessed.
But inheritance is not a spring
That flows forever, replenishing.
The skills we lose, the trades we close,
Are not restored because we chose.
A nation need not make it all,
Nor hide behind a tariff wall.
But wisdom asks that we retain
The means to build and rise again.
For independence, rightly weighed,
Is not the absence of foreign trade.
It is the strength to stand upright,
While trading freely, fair and right.
VI. Our World
And further still, beyond the sea,
The circle grows to you and me.
To distant shores and foreign lands,
Where others labour with their hands.
The farmer working foreign soil,
The sailor weathering ocean’s toil,
The scientist with dreams untold,
And the craftsman shaping precious gold.
Their hopes are neither strange nor new,
They want the things we cherish too.
A home, a future, children fed,
And a little comfort, with daily bread.
And surely trade, when fairly done,
Need not leave a loser for each one.
For nations, like the folk next door,
May prosper when they each make more.
Not every country need provide
The same things as the other side.
But each should have the chance to grow,
To make, to learn, to reap and sow.
For harmony is not achieved
When one grows rich and others grieve.
Nor can a lasting peace be found
Where others’ hopes are driven down.
The world is not a single street,
Yet all our separate pathways do meet.
And though our languages may differ,
Our common hopes run like a river.
VII. Our Realisation
So back we come to where we started,
Two neighbours, once so neatly parted.
A fence, a hedge, a little gate,
And all the choices that await.
We need not surrender all we own,
Nor sacrifice the dreams we’ve grown.
We need not always pay the most,
Nor shun the treasures of another coast.
But sometimes, when we choose to buy,
We might consider where, and why.
Whose hands have worked, whose skills survive,
Whose children may one day thrive.
A penny saved is something gained,
But what, perhaps, has been sustained?
A neighbour’s trade, a village store,
A future worth a little more?
For every choice, however small,
May touch another after all.
And what we give, and what we take,
Helps shape the world we jointly make.
The smallest kindness, freely given,
May reach much further than we imagine.
From neighbour’s door to distant shore,
Our lives are bound by something more.
And if we wish to live among
The fruits of all that others have done,
Perhaps we owe a little too,
To those whose lives are touched by you.
Not by command, nor fear, nor might,
But simply knowing what is right.
And there, perhaps, we find the beauty,
Of that old-fashioned word—
Duty.
Postscript
The world we inherit is the product of countless generations who worked, created, cared and contributed, often without knowing whose lives their efforts would eventually touch.
We are the beneficiaries of their endeavours, just as others may one day become the beneficiaries of ours.
Prosperity is not merely something we acquire. It is something we help create, preserve and pass on.
And perhaps the greatest contribution we can make to our society is not some grand gesture, but the countless little choices through which we consider the wellbeing of others alongside our own.
After all, the world we leave behind will be shaped, in no small part, by how we choose to live within it today.