Balance

The sun shone brilliantly on the Umbrian hills as I pondered on my changed fortunes sitting at a roadside bar along the Niccone Valley road. I suddenly wondered at this moment in a place like this, what use was politics.

That was three years ago. I still enjoy the pleasure being in the peaceful countryside but perhaps see better that politics might have the task of protecting this tranquility. But even such a sentiment perhaps concedes too much to regulatory controls a right that ought to be a gift of nature to care with a certain reverence.

The mark of a civilised society, what might this be? Surely it is the thing called balance. This is the thing I ask my rulers to keep in mind. The thing that is beautiful is the thing that has this delicate but sure sense of balance, or perhaps possessed of that even rarer quality - harmony.