On Quality and Harmony

Nature delights to put us between extreme antagonisms, and our safety is in the skill with which we keep the diagonal line. Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one, and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet we do not lose our sympathy.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude

In a previous essay, On Quality and Morality, I explored the idea that embracing both Romantic and Classical perspectives is essential to truly embrace Quality. The Romantic, like Emerson’s Self-Reliance, speaks to intuition and internal truth. The Classical, like Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, emphasizes structure and rational process. To navigate both perspectives, we need something more than abstract appreciation or optimized routines – we need Harmony.

Congruence comes from the Latin congruentia meaning “agreement” and “harmony” or “suitableness or appropriateness of one thing to another”. Carl Rogers described congruence as the alignment between our self-concept and our lived experience. To be sure then, incongruence is the opposite, or when we live out of sync with what we know to be true. This state of misalignment creates dissonance, sometimes even manifesting in the body with anxiety, apathy, tension, and disease.

Consider the person who knows what lights them up inside but continues to chase external validation or the investor who has a reliable philosophy and process but gets caught in the daily news flow and animal spirits of the day. In both cases, that internal knowledge – our Romantic sense – gets ignored in the very world where it must be expressed. Over time, that disconnect corrodes us, until the tension between what is and what ought to be becomes intolerable.

In this essay, I assert the importance of a reflective process, one that allows us to integrate both internal and external, Romantic and Classical guidance so that we can live in Harmony, the garden of Quality.  

A Natural Disposition, to Seek Tranquility

“Happiness consists in tranquility and enjoyment. Without tranquility there can be no enjoyment, and where there is perfect tranquility there is scarce anything which is not capable of amusing. But in every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.” – Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Much of moral philosophy comes back to a central theme: the human pursuit of tranquility.  

The Greeks called it eudaimonia, literally “good soul”, encompassing a life not just of happiness, but of virtue, purpose, and flourishing. Similarly, the Japanese concept of ikigai, or “reason for being”, blends personal joy, skill, and societal contribution into a coherent whole. Both ideas revolve around Harmony between what calls us internally and what the world requires externally.

If we consider Quality to be the place where one’s intuitive sense of Morality is met with deliberate actions intended to reach some result, then one must be aware of both:

1) Our inner sense of direction and truth (Romantic)

2) Our actions, which should be intentionally crafted to express that truth (Classical)

When these two poles are met, we are acting in congruence. When we act in congruence, we live in Harmony. In Harmony, we can find a deep, Antifragile sense of tranquility.

The Dis-Ease of Distraction

In our modern world, this Harmony is difficult to maintain. We’re constantly distracted by social media, emails, market alerts, and this never-ending pressure to “keep up”. This fragmentation of the mind makes it difficult to even notice our own misalignment. The Romantic signal gets lost in the noise of day-to-day operations.

In investing, this is especially prominent. We’re flooded with information from earnings calls, interest rate policy, geopolitical tensions, and domestic politics, and thus it has become much easier to be perpetually reactive. But at some deep level, even amidst all the stimulus, we know when we’re faking it, when we’re off course, when we’re acting out of congruence. That dis-ease, literally a lack of ease, eventually finds a way to speak through phenomenon like apathy, burnout, imposter syndrome, or simply a quiet loss of vitality.

We must build reflective processes into our lives to regularly check in with our internal sense, and to do a sort of “moral accounting” of our actions undertaken; to assess how they interact with our internal sense of what we must do or how we must live. We must deliberately retreat into our own personal rabbit holes to stop and assess the situation, before returning to the reactive, distraction-ridden world.

The Rabbit Hole and the Park

Let’s imagine a rabbit hole in a park. Once we descend into the hole, it gets dark and complicated, with many routes to go down and limited visibility to clearly decide. For some time, we can still hear the outside world, though our other senses begin to fade into the darkness. At some point, our eyes adjust, and we enter a night or tunnel vision-like state, where nothing in the outside world is impacting our awareness, thus we can now see clearly. This is the beginning of recovering our Romantic awareness, the inner call toward Quality. Here, we find an intoxicating yet isolating alcove many, many layers down. To be sure, this initial find is euphoric, but can also be paralyzing, as we must now learn to ascend back to the real world, to procure our resources and ensure continuation of life.

A rabbit who stays inside the rabbit hole will surely soon run out of water and food, and thus life. This is us when we remain trapped inside our minds, always pondering “what if I did that thing” and letting that Romanticism stay inside the isolating alcove. Only by leaving the rabbit hole to re-enter the park, the real world, can we test our philosophy and connect to both sides of Quality. It is only when we present that thing to the community in that way that we have contemplated in the alcove for so long, that Romanticism meets Classicism.

To be sure, the rabbit will very regularly have to revisit the rabbit hole for warmth and comfort and solitude, to ensure that Harmony still exists between the internal sense of “doing the right thing the right way for its own sake” while still “learning the nuts and bolts of the right thing because that’s how one does things right”. But at least now the rabbit has Process, a way of maintaining and checking in with both sides of the Self, both sides of Quality.

With this reflective process, we can engage in the infinite game – one defined by the beauty and fulfillment of Quality. In this balance, between solitude (our rabbit hole) and society (the park), Romanticism and Classicism, we walk Emerson’s diagonal line. On that line, we find Quality.

Reflective Process and Ongoing Harmony

The world is not short of market-jolting headlines and our personal lives are never safe from strife. Add in the most abundant information age in recorded history, and you have a cocktail tailored for human distraction and loss of Self-awareness. The questions of how to live a good life and navigate these challenges have been asked for millennia and so, lucky for us, there are frameworks and philosophies that can help guide our path.

Process is a key part of the life of an investor and many other occupations. I would argue Process is a key part of everything if we intend to live with Quality. Continuously checking in with your internal compass while acting with intent in the real world is no small feat – it requires both awareness and persistence. By embracing the concept of Harmony between the two selves, we can build a process that helps ensure we are still acting in accordance with that Romantic sense of what is true to us, regardless of the cyclical nature of the real world with its curveballs and gut punches.

This gives us our “why” – the driving force that compels us to keep “learning the nuts and bolts” of the thing despite the inevitable trials ahead. In that Process, we return to Harmony, and there, we find peace and joy.