The seafarers and shipwrights today’s Bermudians are descended from would have been intimately familiar with a venerable nautical term, one which dates from Roman times: “When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

It’s an axiom that would have been in common usage during the days of the Island’s dynamic maritime economy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This was the era when canny Bermudian sailors and speedy Bermudian vessels helped to revolutionise Atlantic commerce in the English-speaking New World.

The adaptability, resourcefulness and industry of Bermudians combined with our geographic location allowed the Island to prosper mightily as it gradually developed into “the eye of all trade” conducted along the great arc of settlements extending from Newfoundland in the north to Tobago in the south.

Bermudians in those times not only always knew what harbours they were making for, they knew the varying needs of their clients in those ports. Bermuda sloops and schooners carried everything from salt to turtles to whale blubber to North America and the West Indies, returning laden with the provisions the Island needed to survive.

Consequently, although the Island existed on the very periphery of the British Atlantic world, the adventurous, aggressively enterprising spirit of its people allowed Bermuda to play a central role in the economic activity which knit those far-flung communities together.

Knowing what harbour we are making for should be as much an economic imperative for today’s Bermudians as it was for our ancestors.

But there seems to be no consensus on the direction we should be heading, on the course we should even now be navigating to a post-recessionary future. None of the winds tearing through an increasingly globalised economy can be the right one for Bermuda until we determine where we actually want to go.

While differences of opinion and judgement are inevitable in Bermuda’s political realm, we should be in basic agreement on some fundamentals. And surely nothing is more fundamental to Bermuda’s long-term well-being than economic growth. If we are to put our people back to work, if we are to come to grips with our mounting fiscal and social problems, if we are to renew international confidence in Bermuda and Bermudians’ confidence in themselves, then we need to demonstrate to the world, as Sir John Swan says, that the Island is “actually in the business of doing business”.

It’s indisputable that myopic and arbitrary changes to Bermuda’s work permit rules were every bit as much responsible for the rapid contraction of our economy – prompting the relocation of some international firms and a massive exodus of jobs — as the impact of the global recession.

Yet the recent manufactured uproar over relatively minor changes to immigration policies suggests that any wholesale attempt to regrow the economy by regrowing Bermuda’s depleted population would be met by politically-motivated obstructionism.

Such aggressively protectionist immigration policies are utterly self-defeating. As Cayman has so successfully demonstrated, introducing less restrictive work-permit regulations quickly leads to a more investor-friendly climate. And this is a situation which ultimately benefits everyone.

That Caribbean jurisdiction’s population grew by more than 4.5 per cent in 2014/15. This demographic boomlet was largely due to a spike in the expatriate labour force resulting from the relaxation of rules similar to Bermuda’s now discontinued term-limit policy for work permit holders. As a consequence employment opportunities for Caymanians also grew and the island now boasts a budget surplus for the first time in many years.

In the meantime our economy remains in the doldrums.

Our only two industries, International Business and tourism, are stubbornly stagnant.

Our job market is contracting, our number of non-performing loans is sky-rocketing and all manner of our other socio-economic vital signs are hovering perilously close to the red zone.

And all the while our obligations as well as our already crushing debt burden continue to increase by the day.

No one is proposing Bermuda adopt an open-door policy towards its expatriate workforce or remove all of the checks and balances which ensure qualified locals are given preference in the job market (not that any employer who values either his sanity or his bottom line would willingly run the Immigration Department’s gauntlet of bureaucratic red tape to bring in a foreign worker when a perfectly competent Bermudian was already available).

But in today’s globalised economy, Bermudians must be every bit as adaptable, resourceful and industrious as our forebears were in the Age of Sail.

We need to know – and be responsive to — the needs of our clients.

And, most importantly, we need to be agreed upon our destination and not make any more abrupt course corrections while en route.

For we simply cannot afford any further delays in reaching a harbour which will provide safe moorage for our economy and do the most good for the greatest number of our people.