This week’s Harmony Project essay from Tom Van Wyen starts with baseball — and ends somewhere deeper. Tom confesses that growing up in the 1960s and 70s, when the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry was at its most bitter, he loved them both. Munson and Yaz. Nettles and Fisk. His blood, he says, ran both blue and red.
He feels the same way about the two philosophies he follows. Stoicism and Taoism — ancient Greece and ancient China — look like opposites at first glance. But Tom sees them as two teams playing for the same pennant: different paths to the same summit.
Both, he writes, try to quiet the noise of unhealthy emotion and replace it with calm and clarity. Stoicism teaches us to live by reason; Taoism teaches us to live by the Way. Marcus Aurelius wrote his reminders in a campaign tent — stay disciplined, control what you can, accept what you cannot. Lao Tzu pointed at water — soft and yielding, yet strong enough to wear down stone.
Tom’s conclusion is pure Harmony Project: sometimes life demands a Stoic spine, and sometimes it calls for a Taoist heart. Yankees or Red Sox, structure or surrender — he doesn’t choose. He carries them both. The full essay is linked below, with three questions to sit with at the end.
