Why the Song Matters

A note on the title of my work‑in‑progress memoir, Six Ribbons.

I’ve been asked a few times why the memoir I’m slowly shaping carries this title. There are many reasons — some historical, some spiritual, some deeply personal — and I’ll share them over the coming months.

But this is the first one.
The earliest one.
The one that found me before I had language for any of it.

When I was nine years old, sitting beside my mother watching Against the Wind, something stirred in me that I didn’t have language for at the time. The theme song — Six Ribbons — reached into a place I didn’t yet understand. It was my first moment of soul awareness. My first sense that life was not beginning at zero, but at the confluence of something older, deeper, and already in motion.

The song became the emotional anchor of this memoir because it mirrors the truth of my lineage. My ancestors were not emperors, merchants, or noblemen. They were farmers, labourers, convicts, battlers, believers — working‑class men and women who had little to give in material terms, but who left something far more enduring: their souls.

The song’s imagery — simple gifts offered with humility — became, for me, a metaphor for the six ancestral soul reservoirs. Each ancestor left behind a reservoir of traits: courage, stubbornness, tenderness, innovation, faith, service, defiance, humour, grit. These are the ribbons. These are the gifts. These are the only inheritances that matter.

And just as ribbons can tie back hair, steadying it against the wind, the soul traits of my ancestors have steadied me — sometimes saving me, sometimes harming me, always shaping me. In calm seasons, these traits rest. In hardship, they activate. They twist, blow, and turn in the winds of life. They can shorten a life or prolong it. They can destroy or save.

The song also carries a deeper truth:
that love, presence, and soul connection matter more than wealth or status.
that what we leave behind is not diamonds or palaces, but the essence of who we were.
that the soul is the only inheritance that endures.

This aligns with a poem I wrote decades later, after my awakening — the realisation that our ancestors are not gone. Their reservoirs remain active in eternity. Each prayer strengthens the connection. Each act of remembrance draws their grace into the present moment. They are not forgotten. They are not silent. They are not alone.

And one day, when my own time on Earth ends, I too will leave behind only one thing:
my soul.

That will be the seventh ribbon — the reservoir my daughter will one day draw from.
This is why the song matters.

It is not nostalgia.
It is not sentimentality.
It is the soundtrack of my inheritance — and the quiet prophecy of the life I would one day live.

Founder of the Hadspen Foundation, Jason is committed to building frameworks for spiritual recovery that are both repeatable and personal. His writing is guided by discernment, narrative cadence, and the belief that doctrine should support—not overshadow—the human story.