As a musician who has tended to sing (tenor) and play (viola) parts, I have long been attuned to the issue of harmony. The questions of balance of unity that fill our lives have elegant solutions in the world of music. And because it is easier to be in harmony in music than it is in life, one can use music as an entrance into what is a much more tricky and difficult subject as a whole. As is so often the case, a model that is somewhat more simple can at least demonstrate key and important aspects of a much more complicated problem.

As long as I can remember I have been involved in and interested in music. Whether it has been singing or playing the viola, writing lyrics and coming up with melodies (or harmonies) in my head, I have been involved with music in some fashion for more than a quarter of a century in a variety of ways. During most of that time I have performed in supporting roles (only occasionally as a solist), and the responsibility of support parts is far different from that of soloists. Sometimes, as in a chamber orchestra, one is the only member of your part, and so there is no cover when things go wrong, even if one plays a part that serves to embellish the main one and not draw personal attention for virtuosity.

How does one know if one is doing it right? As it happens, there are benefits that happen when everyone is doing harmony correctly. One can hear the clear tone as the chord fits together perfectly and multiple parts sound like one pure sound, and there is an instant benefit in strength of the sound due to the resonance of all of the parts working together in perfect harmony. It is these moments that bring joy to a musician (or to an audience), and they require skill and hard work to hone individual music talents into a coherent and cohesive whole, a much more difficult and rewarding task. When you get it right, you know it and so does everyone else.

What relevance does this have to our lives? Harmony is often a very important problem in institutions and society at large. All too often people pay insufficient attention to support tasks–issues like infrastructure and logistics, and tend to take them for granted until they fail and everyone starts pointing fingers. These support tasks are not glorious nor do they tend to draw a great deal of attention to the people performing these tasks, but they are vital and important because it is impossible to do the glorious and public unless the more low-key and private tasks are done.

And just like in music, when everything is working in harmony, people know and recognize it. I can only think of a few times when I have been working in task where everyone is in harmony with everyone else and everything is working smoothly, but those times are magical. Sadly, they do not seem to last, as there is a lot that has to be done right to keep everything in its proper balance and proportion. It is those moments that work out correctly that inspire us to fight through the disharmony and disunity that plague most of our lives. If we can see what looks right, we are able to tell when things are going wrong as well.

And the same issues apply in music as well as in life. In life it is not only that we have to do an individual task, but that we have to do this task in the context of others doing their tasks in harmony with ours. Our jobs and tasks in life are part of larger processes that involve plenty of other people. If one person does their job far faster or more efficiently than others, or far slower or less efficiently, there will be problems as work piles up in particular areas and overall productivity suffers. This tends to create a great deal of stress, especially if the processes are poorly designed and imbalanced, to make some jobs much more time-consuming and difficult than others.

What is to be done about this? For one, if we want our lives to be in harmony and balance, they must be in balance with others–it is not merely a selfish and personal matter, but a matter of our institutions as well. We have to find a balance not only in our own lives, but with others so that all necessary tasks are filled, so that our lives can go smoothly and so we can gain that resonance in our lives that is so often lacking because balance and harmony are not found. Let us therefore do what we can to gain that harmony and the benefits of it in our lives and institutions. We could all use more harmony and balance in this conflict-fraught world.