We begin with Merle Haggard and “Irma Jackson.”

Haggard described the song as fiction — a love story between two people of different races, in a situation their families and society wouldn’t accept.

That’s the first bank.

Two people may feel something real. But the world around them has already drawn a line. Family, society, expectation and race all say: this crossing is not allowed.

So the first stone isn’t movement — yet.

It’s the recognition of the wall.

This is Merle Haggard and “Irma Jackson”.

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“Irma Jackson” begins with a relationship that can’t simply be private. The feeling between two people is forced into public conflict because society has rules about who may love whom, who belongs where, and what mustn’t be crossed.

That makes it a powerful starting point for Stepping Stones, because Position A isn’t just personal fear. It’s a world of inherited boundaries. The kind of world that tells people the stream is dangerous before they’ve even put a foot near the water.

Sarah McLachlan’s “Elsewhere” takes the next step inward.

In VH1 Storytellers, she described the song as being about the trappings of youth and adolescence — not really knowing who you are, and struggling to find your own identity within your parents’ home and within society.

That’s the second stone.

In “Irma Jackson,” society refuses the crossing from the outside. In “Elsewhere,” society has moved inside the person. The conflict is no longer only between two lovers and the world around them. It’s between the self that’s forming and the pressures that surround it.

Who am I, if my family sees me one way?

Who am I, if society expects another?

Who am I, if I’m still young enough to be shaped, but old enough to know the shape doesn’t quite fit?

This is a crucial shift. Before a person can cross towards compassion, responsibility or community, they often have to cross towards themselves. They have to notice the difference between the life being handed to them and the life trying to emerge from within.

So we move from an outer wall to an inner struggle.

The stream is still there. But now the crossing is not only about society changing its mind.

It’s about a person discovering one of their own.

This is Sarah McLachlan and a live version of “Elsewhere”.

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Sarah McLachlan gives us adolescence as a borderland: the space between childhood and adulthood, family and self, belonging and becoming.

Alanis Morissette’s “Perfect” sharpens that pressure.

She told MOJO in 1996 that the song is about her relationship with her parents and society — the pressures that are rarely said outright but are suggested everywhere: unless you’re externally successful, you’re nothing. She said putting that feeling into words was cathartic.

That’s the third stone.

In “Elsewhere,” the young person is trying to find an identity. In “Perfect,” the world offers one — but it’s conditional. Be successful. Be impressive. Be acceptable. Meet the standard. Become what others can approve of.

This matters because Position A isn’t only prejudice. It’s measurement.

A society can trap people by telling them who they may love. It can also trap them by telling them what they must become. It can say: your value is external. Your worth is visible. Your success must be recognisable to others or it doesn’t count.

And once that message gets inside a person, it can become harder to cross. The parent’s voice, the school’s voice, your culture’s voice, the market’s voice — they all begin to sound like your own.

That’s why this stone belongs here. It exposes one of the hidden mechanisms of the closed world. It’s not always shouting. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it doesn’t have to say anything directly at all. The pressure is simply everywhere.

So the episode moves from social boundary, to identity struggle, to the measuring system that keeps people trying to earn their right to exist.

And the next step is to widen the view.

This is Alanis Morissette with “Perfect”.

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“Perfect” shows what happens when a person is pressed into an approved shape: be externally successful, or be nothing.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “Women III” begins to break that habit of seeing people too narrowly.

Andy McCluskey told Musician in 1985 that he had become more aware of women within society than he used to be. When he was growing up, his mum was his mum, his sisters were his sisters, and girls were for chatting up and taking to bed. Now, he said, he was beginning to see people within a social context.

That’s the fourth stone, and it is a genuine crossing.

The movement is from role to person. From private category to social awareness. From seeing someone only in relation to yourself — mother, sister, girlfriend, object of desire — to seeing them inside a wider world of expectation, limitation and pressure.

That’s a different kind of perspective from simple sympathy. Sympathy might say, “I feel bad for you.” Social awareness says, “I’m beginning to understand the system around you.”

And that’s a deeper step.

Because many forms of judgement depend on making other people small enough to fit our existing view. We reduce them to a role. We decide what they are for. We see them in fragments: parent, child, worker, lover, stranger, problem, failure, threat.

“Women III” moves against that. It doesn’t claim to solve everything. It doesn’t arrive waving a flag and declaring the work complete. Its importance is quieter: the narrator is noticing that his earlier way of seeing was too narrow.

That’s what makes it a stepping stone.

The world doesn’t become compassionate all at once. First, someone has to realise they have been looking too simply.

This is OMD and “Women III”.

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“Women III” gives us the first widening of vision: a person beginning to see other people not just through personal roles, but within a social context.

Rickie Lee Jones’ “The Evening Of My Best Day” moves from awareness into moral transformation.

Jones told The Independent in 2004 that the song was originally about a solitary loneliness that took the shape of a little boy. She said she’d always been pro-death penalty, but a series of things changed her. She came to feel compassion for people who commit unspeakable acts. She imagined them once being little — with Christmas stockings, pyjamas and hot chocolate — and said the song was a picture of the child before it turns into a monster, not the monster itself.

That’s the fifth stone, and perhaps the most difficult.

Because it asks us to cross from judgement to compassion without pretending harm is harmless.

That’s not an easy crossing. In fact, it’s the kind many people refuse even to attempt.

Compassion can sound like excuse-making. Understanding can sound like softness. To look for the child before the monster can feel, to some, like an insult to the people the monster later hurt.

But Jones is not excusing the adult. She’s trying to understand the human story before the final shape hardened. She’s reminding herself — and us — that a person doesn’t begin as the worst thing they ever do.

This is a major movement away from Position A.

The closed world judges from the finished product. It looks at the outcome and says: monster.

End of story.

The crossing world asks the harder question: what happened before that? Where was the wound? Where was the absence? Where was the failure of care? What did the world miss when this person was still small enough to be reached?

That doesn’t remove responsibility. But it changes the frame.

And once the frame changes, compassion can become possible.

This is Rickie Lee Jones and “The Evening Of My Best Day”.

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Rickie Lee Jones gives us compassion as a moral crossing: the attempt to see the child before the monster, the story before the judgement, the human being before the final label.

Heather Nova’s “Stop The Fire” turns that compassion outward into community repair.

Nova said the song’s about gang violence in Bermuda which is a difficult, sensitive subject. She didn’t want to sound as if she were preaching. Her angle was that maybe we don’t understand each other, maybe barriers need to be broken down, and maybe we need compassion for people who had a rough childhood. She said the violence comes from not having the nurturing and love they needed. That’s where it starts. So the community needs to help young people be more cared for, and give them something positive to put their energy into.

That’s the sixth stone.

The movement is no longer only inside one person’s conscience. It becomes social, practical and communal.

Because compassion that stays abstract can become sentimental. It can make us feel better about ourselves without changing anything around us. “Stop The Fire” pushes beyond that. It asks what a community does with compassion.

Does it break down barriers?

Does it care for people sooner?

Does it create places where young energy can go before it turns destructive?

Does it recognise that violence doesn’t appear from nowhere?

This song makes the crossing more urgent. If “The Evening Of My Best Day” asks us to see the child before the monster, “Stop The Fire” asks what might have happened if that child had been met earlier by love, nurturing, attention and purpose.

That’s a powerful development.

The episode has moved from society saying no, to the self struggling under pressure, to the measuring system, to widened awareness, to compassion, and now to repair.

We’re almost on the far bank.

This is Heather Nova and “Stop The Fire”.

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Heather Nova’s “Stop The Fire” says compassion must become community care. It’s not enough to understand pain after it’s become violence. The task is to care earlier, break down barriers, and help people find something positive to put their lives into.

But that “repair” can’t depend only on kindness in general. It needs responsibility.

Arkells’ “What Are You Holding On To?” brings us to the final stone.

Max Kerman said the song is about accountability — not just to your family or your God, but to everybody in your community and to people you don’t know. Kerman says he dislikes the expression “only God can judge me,” because it can become a way of avoiding responsibility to anyone else. The fact of the matter, he says, is that we’re all in this together.

That’s Position “B”.

Not perfection. Not a world without conflict. Not a world where every crossing has been made and every division healed. But a world where the self is no longer the only unit of concern.

This is where the stepping stones have been leading.

From “Irma Jackson,” where society blocks love across a racial line.

To “Elsewhere,” where a young person struggles to find identity inside family and society.

To “Perfect,” where value is measured by external success.

To “Women III,” where someone begins to see people within a wider social context.

To “The Evening Of My Best Day,” where judgement opens towards compassion.

To “Stop The Fire,” where compassion becomes community repair.

And now to “What Are You Holding On To?”, where repair becomes shared responsibility.

That’s the far bank.

Accountability beyond the self.

The closed world says: protect your own, judge the outsider, succeed visibly, keep your distance, answer only to whatever authority lets you off the hook.

The crossed world says: you are responsible to people you may never meet. Your life touches theirs. Their life touches yours. Community is not sentimental scenery. It’s the fact of our mutual involvement.

And perhaps that’s what the stream was always asking.

Not “whether we can become flawless” but “whether we can cross far enough to understand that no one gets to stand alone on the bank forever.”

Think about it as you listen to Arkells and “What are you holding on to?”

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