The Oxford English Dictionary defines harmony as “the quality forming a pleasing and consistent whole.” I like the idea that harmony is something greater than consonance. It is formed as disparate elements synchronize towards something complete. I think of a beautiful meal, with savory, salty, spicy, sweet, sour components. It is not only that each element provides something that the others cannot, but that each element brings out the best in the others. Harmony is beautiful because it can be created through the combination of similar elements, or the combination of entirely different elements. It is sometimes displayed as symmetry. It suggests that when paired with light, darkness has an essential purpose, as with pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, energy and exhaustion, and so on. We must embrace it all to achieve the harmony the soul craves.