The ancients who tended to the tao
abided in calm
to nourish their wisdom,
but
they did not depend
on their wisdom in their actions.
It can be said that they preserved their calm
with wisdom.
When wisdom and calm
foster one another from innate nature,
harmony and order emerge.

Virtue is harmony
and tao is order.

Zhuangzi trans by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 16

How typical that we find traction to consider the texture of living in harmony with ourselves by projecting, a look-back to a time long long ago, a era before humankind became as dis-harmonious as is presently the case. Not that we have empirical evidence of such a time, or that we agree upon when this paradisical era was historical reality.

Well and good: such speculation is a necessary, an important starting block…

How in the name of the gods did I become so unhappy? Surely I did not become distressed in solitude? Social surroundings were and are germane, I and “we” cannot be separated. Thus I can imagine a time before “everything” become so pushed out-of-shape. 

Tao is deep seated hunch, a premonition that there is a thread of equilibrium that runs through all things. Everything without exception is included. From the simplest atom to the vast star system(s) an ordering logic, organic, natural, — a “given” to be counted upon. Nothing left out! The ground of all being is supposed to be this steady-state of calm. 

To abide in calm is easy to say, but extremely difficult when one is on the high wire. I know that you’ve been on a high wire. I have. A job lay-off comes out of nowhere. Then there is the time when you or someone close to you gets an extremely serious medical diagnosis. Or perhaps you are betrayed by a friend.

Knowing-how, or wisdom comes down to practice, practice, practice. You must learn to keep your balance on the wire. That is not easy and it takes time. Zhuangzi writes that calm and wisdom belong together, both grow in concert together. Even the usual day to day routine offers plenty of friction. You must spend time and effort to become “fluent” in all kinds of “languages”, for example, color and form of visual art, or the emotional and physical expression of theater, or the mathematics and instrumental dexterity of one of the sciences, etc., etc..  With such endeavors wisdom and calm grow along with competency…

A mutual fostering so that harmony emerges!

Harmony is adaptive virtue…

tao is none other than such “ordering”.