This month two international days come together happily on 21 March. The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination focuses on the negative relationships between people of different races and urges commitment to change them. Harmony Day, which this year begins Harmony Week, focuses on the peaceful and friendly relationships between all groups in society, which we would like to see. The first day emphasises the work we must do; the second invites us to imagine the joy of seeing the result of our efforts.
These two aspects of struggle and rest are inseparable in real life. In musical compositions and in literature harmony is usually built out of discord. Love stories commonly begin with two people brought together, often hostile at the beginning, then attracted as they come to know one another, then tested by misunderstanding and by the recognition of how different they are, and finally discovering that they wish to give their lives to one another, with the result that they live happily ever after. Of course, that is only the ending of the novel. In real life their commitment to one another would constantly be tested and need to be reaffirmed. Harmony will be produced by the coming together of apology and forgiveness.
In music, too, the sweetness of harmonious movements is often heightened by the jagged, disturbing movement that has preceded it. When a bunch of beautiful movements from different compositions is put together in a CD of ‘These We Have Loved’, they can sound cloying.
To eliminate racial discrimination it is necessary but not sufficient to suppress the ways of behaving and speaking through which it is expressed. We must go deeper and address the inner discontents out of which it comes. If we speak badly of people who are different from us and treat them badly, our own lives may have been marked by similar discrimination we have suffered from others, or by fear and resentment that arise from painful experiences. The anger and contempt we feel for others may reflect the discord within ourselves.
To move from discord to harmony we need to find the right notes out of which to produce harmony. In human relationships that means moving beyond preoccupation with ourselves, with our miseries, our discontents and resentments. As we are drawn out of ourselves to notice other people and to begin to listen to their experience and the way in which they see the world we discover that they are like us in important ways.
Then we begin to see our differences as interesting, not repelling, as a promise and not as a threat, as an addition and not a subtraction. We also find that people who seemed alien share the same kind of disappointments, struggles and simple joys as we do.
Once we share our experience, we begin to attend to the factors in our world that oppress people, including ourselves. We shall have a common cause to change our world, to work together in harmony to address the ways in which our society discriminates against our weakest members, regardless of race. Harmonies don’t put us to sleep. They give us work to do.