Life Was Not Meant To Be Balanced

I am supposed to write about Balance.

Emotional Balance.
Financial Balance.
Relationship Balance.
Health and Lifestyle Balance.

All very sensible.

All very grown-up.

All very nice on a poster.

And I keep looking at this word.

Balance.

Really?

You open the bank app and close it again quickly because, frankly, not today.

You tell someone, “I’m fine,” while mentally calculating whether the car repair, the electricity bill, and the birthday present can all live in the same month.

You answer a message with “No worries” when there are, in fact, several worries.

You stand in the kitchen, look at the dishes, and decide that future you can have a character-building experience.

You say, “I’m just busy,” because it sounds better than, “I am slightly overwhelmed and pretending not to be.”

And then someone says:

“You need more balance.”

Thank you, Susan.

Very helpful.

When I lived in Australia, Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister. He had a sentence. Everybody knew it.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

That was the line. Or at least, that was the line everybody remembered.

It sounded stern. Dry. No nonsense. Stop complaining. Get on with it.

Only later did I realise the original line came from George Bernard Shaw.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

And there, of course, is the problem.

We kept the difficult bit.

We lost the delightful bit.

Very human.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

Fine.

But was it meant to be balanced?

I am not so sure.

Because most of the time, when people say they want balance, I wonder if they mean something else.

They want the outside to look calmer than the inside feels.

They want the WhatsApp reply to sound lighter than the mood.

They want the photo to show the smiling bit, not the argument in the car five minutes earlier.

They want the sentence “we’re managing” to cover a whole mountain of things nobody has the energy to explain.

And we all do it.

I do it.

You do it.

We all know the little performance.

“I’m fine.”

“Just tired.”

“Bit hectic.”

“Can’t complain.”

“Making ends meet.”

Making ends meet.

What a phrase.

So modest. So practical. So adult.

And sometimes it is exactly true. People have rent to pay. Food to buy. Children to care for. Parents to worry about. I am not mocking that. I would not dare.

But sometimes “making ends meet” becomes a curtain.

A way of not looking too closely.

A way of saying: I am too busy surviving to ask what this is doing to me.

The funny thing is, people often know.

They see the wobble.

They hear the pause before the answer.

They notice the tired face, the forced joke, the strange silence.

We think we are hiding it brilliantly.

We are not.

The secret is often open.

We know.
They know.
We know they know.

And still we keep the little show going.

Recently, I spoke with Ralf. He described life at home when he was a child.

I will not tell his story. It is his.

But I came away quiet.

Not inspired. I dislike that word when it is used too quickly.

Quiet.

Some stories do not need a clever answer. They just sit on the table and change the room.

Then I spoke with my Russian client, who is improving his German. We were supposed to be talking about language. Grammar. Sentences. The normal stuff.

But, as often happens, language opened another door.

We started talking about positive thinking.

Belief.

Values.

Attitudes.

The difference between saying, “Everything will be fine,” and actually having something solid under your feet when it is not fine.

Positive thinking is easy to sell.

Belief is harder.

Positive thinking says: look on the bright side.

Belief says: stand there anyway.

That is a different matter.

And I thought about my own life.

The mistakes.

The strange decisions.

The things I should have seen earlier.

The things I was not ready to understand.

Annoying, yes.

Sometimes expensive.

Sometimes stupid.

But also interesting.

Because I was not prepared properly.

That sounds harsh.

So let us be fair.

My parents were not prepared properly either.

They were raised in their own cocoon. I was raised in mine. We all inherit things. Not just money, furniture, recipes, and old photographs.

We inherit silence.

We inherit fear.

We inherit ways of coping.

We inherit ways of not coping.

We inherit sentences.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

Yes.

But what do we do with that?

Do we pretend everything is fine?

Nonsense.

Do we make suffering sound noble?

Worse.

Do we put a scented candle next to the problem and call it balance?

Very 2026.

No.

Maybe balance begins much closer to the ground.

Maybe it begins when you stop pretending the room is tidy.

When you admit the month is tight.

When you say, “Actually, I am not fine today.”

When you stop smiling at something that hurt.

When you finally open the letter.

When you answer the message honestly.

When you say, “I do not know what I am doing, but I am trying.”

That sentence may be closer to balance than all the lifestyle advice in the world.

I do not know what I am doing, but I am trying.

There is dignity in that.

Not glamour.

Dignity.

Because life is not a spreadsheet.

It does not sit in neat columns.

Money affects relationships.

Relationships affect sleep.

Sleep affects work.

Work affects health.

Health affects mood.

Mood affects the way you answer one harmless little message, and suddenly everybody is standing in the emotional soup wondering who added the onions.

So yes, this issue is about Balance.

But not the shiny version.

Not the curated version.

Not the version where everyone is breathing deeply beside a houseplant.

This issue is about real balance.

The kind that begins when the performance stops.

The kind that says:

Life is difficult.
Life is uneven.
Life is inherited.
Life is full of unfinished business.
Life does not fit into our categories.

And still, we come to the table.

Still, we speak.

Still, we listen.

Still, we try to say something properly.

Not perfectly.

Properly.

There is a difference.

Maybe that is where balance begins.

Not when life becomes easy.

Not when everything finally fits.

But when the open secret is allowed into the room.

When someone says, “Yes. Me too.”

When the image cracks a little.

And instead of falling apart, something more honest appears.

Life was not meant to be easy.

Fine.

But take courage.

It can still be delightful.

Not always.

Not on command.

Not because someone has put a quote on Instagram.

But sometimes.

In a conversation.

In a small admission.

In a laugh at the wrong moment.

In the relief of not pretending.

In finding words and discovering they are enough.

That is not bullology.

That is life.

And for now, that is enough.