Willam Wordsworth and the Meaning of Balance
- Nov 1, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 8
Why balance isn't about splitting the difference.
An issue I'd like to discuss now is that popular notion of balance. You hear it all the time, it's kind of a buzz word. You need work/life balance, dietary balance, etc, etc.
And one thing about the notion of balance is that it seems like a lot of people view it as a compromise.
You have your responsibilities here and your dreams and real life over here. And the balance part comes in when you find some kind of uncomfortable middle ground between the two. On a graph, it's like the mean.
But William Wordsworth didn't think of it like that.
According to the literary critic, Harold Bloom, a lot of Wordsworth’s work revolved around one main issue:
How do you remain true to yourself while still belonging to the world?
This is a question that all of us have to face sooner or later. Because we all want that freedom, that ability to follow our own path. But we also want company, relationships. We have to function in the world.
And this tension between these two natural desires never really goes away. Which is why what Wordsworth says is so interesting.
In Tintern Abbey, he goes back to a landscape that he loved when he was young. At first it seems to be about a poem about nature, but it's really a poem about his connection to nature. It’s about the larger context, the larger world.
He writes: "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her."
This theme also appears in The Prelude. Here Wordsworth talks about being pulled in two directions. One toward imagination and his inner life. While the other feels the pull of society and duty. He admits he’s “wedded to [his] own delights,” but he's also pulled toward “social objects.” There’s tension.
And he actually never resolves that tension. But he instead learns to live inside it so he's not choosing self or the world. Rather, he tries to reconcile them
Bloom calls this the “egotistical sublime,” but that phrase seems a little confusing to me. Because the egotistical part can throw you.
Wordsworth isn't arguing for selfishness. It seems like he's talking about what happens when the self grows beyond itself. When memories, nature, imagination all deepen our connection to the world instead of replacing it.
For example, in The Prelude, he describes what he calls "spots of time." Moments that stay with us.
Turning quickly to another Romantic—John Keats. He nailed this concept in Hyperion, when he said
"Oh aching time! Oh moments, big as years!"
You and I know exactly what he's talking about.
In fact, this is a little aside, but for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, I gave them a big card that listed 50 moments as big as years in our family. It included such mundane things as getting my first pair of running shoes, or our first puppy, to graduating from high school or getting married. I even included some funny or poignant comments that were made over the years that just stuck with me. These moments, some big, some small, had quietly become a part of who I was, and my parents.
Wordsworth believed that it was these types of “spots of time” that held the self together.
And that's kind of how his idea of balance differs from the modern one. He isn't trying to split the difference between competing demands. It's about remaining yourself, but also staying connected to something larger than yourself.
And that's how I think about this in terms of the Blue Flower. Our goal isn’t (or shouldn’t be) to choose between imagination and responsibility or freedom and belonging. The goal is to bring them together.
And yet...
Right you might say, all that sounds good. You’re telling me that this Wordsworth type of balance adds rather than subtracts from your life, but I’m still not quite getting what you mean. How do we bring them together? I only have so many hours in the day. There’s always going to be a compromise, isn’t there?
The answer is yes, of course. Life includes compromising every day, and every choice means one less option.
But again, that's not the kind of balance Wordsworth is talking about.
You know, probably the easiest way to understand this is to stop thinking about balance as two baskets. One basket is responsibility. The other basket is imagination. And your job is to somehow keep them perfectly even. That's how most people think about balance. It’s like a balance beam.
But not Wordsworth.
For him, it wasn’t about juggling two separate lives. It was to bring them together into one life.
For example, a parent doesn't stop being responsible when he’s reading a bedtime story. The bedtime story is part of being a good parent. Or the teacher doesn't stop doing her job when she sees more than a grade. That's part of the job. Or think about a friend. He isn’t choosing between friendship and productivity when he puts down his phone.
And that's the difference.
Balance isn't about giving equal time to different parts of yourself.
It's about bringing all of yourself to what you're already doing. One basket.
That's why Wordsworth never resolves the tension. The goal isn't to eliminate it. The goal is to live in such a way that imagination, responsibility, love, duty, and wonder belong to the same life.
Not two lives. One.
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