“If life isn’t about human beings and living in harmony, then I don’t know what it’s about.” Orlando Bloom, actor

I've been thinking about harmony lately. I've been thinking about it when I look around my messy house, wondering where to begin to transform it into what I hope will be serene beauty. I think about it when I contemplate bringing serenity to my generally chaotic life. It’s a little embarrassing to admit harmony doesn’t seem to be very present in my life. People who are doing things “right” are supposed to have “harmony.”

“For all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony.”
Sri Aurodindo, mystic and philosopher

I can never think about harmony without thinking about this commercial:

I get along with most people, but I don’t feel I’m in harmony with very many people. Sometimes, and in some places, I am in harmony with nature. But when I think about being in harmony with people, I find I look for feelings of comfort, acceptance, absence of anxiety, trust. My mental image is of dancers, between whom there is a seemingly effortless give and take and knowledge of each other that magnifies the gifts of each.


I’m not much of an opera fan in general, but the Lakme Flower Duet is another example of harmony to me.

(Photograph of Fauvism painting ''The Dessert: Harmony In Red'' (1908) by Henri Matisse. Location: The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.)

I like the advice, “For color harmony, look to nature.”

“You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.”
Doug Floyd, author and journalist

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader

Gandhi was speaking of authenticity, I think, and therein likely lies the secret. The comfort and acceptance has to come from within, where authenticity originates. This is not a news bulletin to the universe, but it is a little snippet of greater awareness in my tiny corner of the world.

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.”
Albert Camus, author and philosopher

“The Tao is unpredictable to those that live according to plans. Only those who have no agenda are in harmony with the Tao.”
Unknown; source, The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

I learned the other day that a guy I dated for a pretty long time years ago had done some things recently that were really out of character for how I remembered him. I had not been in touch with him for years, so it wasn’t like I was following his life. But occasionally I would hear something about him, and this last information was just plain surprising.

All these years, I had considered him The One Who Got Away. Let me be clear—I broke up with him, and went on to marry my first husband which enabled me to move away from that town I grew up in, which probably saved my life. Nevertheless, I often thought of his character and his goals in life and thought with a little, but not too much, regret that maybe things could have been different if…

When I learned of this more recent behavior, I was suddenly released from that mild sense of regret that had been there, in the background of my life, for so long. The effect was as if I looked at a timeline of my life, and suddenly a thin thread of regret that had run along most of it was simply snagged away. It felt…strange. I had trouble even remembering what the regret felt like, or why I’d had it in the first place. The feeling was similar to that you might have when you walk through a room and you feel something is missing, but you don’t know what. And if it’s not something you need right away, you forget to care or even think about it again.

The point is the result is the same as if I knew all those years ago that I was making the right choice, instead of worrying that I was making a mistake. If I’d trusted I knew what I was doing, I would never have regretted choosing to move on. So now I’m wondering what it would be like if I broadened the scope of that little epiphany. What if I change a general belief that I’ve made mistakes into a belief that, at some level, I’ve always made the right choices? What if I trust this new belief by believing as well that perhaps the rightness of some of those choices may simply not be evident yet?

Wouldn’t this be like going into the past and doing something that changes the future? What other beliefs could I try this out on?