Balance is a myth

“I’m at this point in life where I don’t want to be mediocre anymore,” my friend whispered — partly drunk, partly self-aware, slurping a cocktail I impulsively concocted in a coffee mug (a bit of genius and jugaad) using leftover vodka and a half-empty bottle of Mazza, a mango beverage forgotten in the fridge. We were sitting on a mattress in my living room, surrounded by the cluttered remains of another overcooked weekday: half-read books, open laptops on low battery and Zepto paper bags that had definitely outlived the groceries it once delivered. But, in that moment of desperate inspiration and existential dread, the drink was surprisingly exquisite. Sweet, sharp and stupidly profound. Maybe the steel bombilla straw or the IKEA coffee mug had something to do with it. Maybe it was just one of those accidental alignments — like a holiday falling just before a weekend, or catching the smell of someone making Maggi in hostel.

Months later, when my girlfriend visited, eager to impress, I confidently attempted to recreate this whimsical masterpiece. Same ingredients. Same mug. Same ceremonial seriousness. Yet, shockingly, the drink tasted quite ordinary. It felt like watching a Bollywood remake of a beloved classic — technically identical, but the soul was missing. This puzzled me deeply. How could something that once felt perfect now taste so disappointingly mediocre? Or maybe it was just the simple absurdity of the night — the kind where mediocrity feels like something you can outdrink.

Mediocrity, as my friend implied, was not about capability or a lack of skill — it was about the quiet comfort of settling into the center of life’s bell curve. Most of us live here, cushioned in the statistically safe middle.

Not failing. Not flying. Just… functioning.

Take, for instance, a photo I saw from a marathon held in Japan last year. Most runners finished with average timings — competent, consistent, forgettable. Their efforts dissolved into statistical oblivion, lost in the calm of the curve. But at the edges — the strugglers gasping through the final stretch, the sprinters soaring ahead of the pack — that’s where the stories lived. The extremes held all the grit, the heartbreak, the glory.

And it made me wonder: if all the meaning is found at the edges, is this middle path we keep glorifying — this elusive idea of balance — just a well-packaged myth?

And yet, despite knowing this, we spend our lives obsessing over staying perfectly centred — as if balance were some gold standard of adulthood. We often treat life like an assiduous act of juggling: work, family, health, friendships — each demanding its own spotlight, its own perfect toss.

But here’s the catch:

Not all the balls are made equal. Some are rubber, some are glass.

Your family, your relationships — those are the glass ones. Invaluable and delicate. Drop them, and they shatter painfully, often irreparably. Work, goals, deadlines — they’re the rubber balls. Drop them, and sure, they bounce chaotically, perhaps awkwardly, but ultimately they come back up. We forget this distinction far too easily, getting lost in the dopamine loop of deliverables. Even my mom affirms to this subtle wisdom when she gently nudges me at a buffet, whispering, “Beta, main course pe bhi dhyaan do, starters se pet mat bharo.” Yet, the illusion persists that life’s ideal position is in this mythical balance, the comfortable middle. But let me tell you a little secret — the middle might be safe and cozy but it is also thoroughly forgettable. True magic happens only at the extremes.

Imagine a graph with work on one axis and play on the other. Conventional wisdom draws a neat diagonal line of balance. But life is much more asymmetrical than we think. Think about Neeraj Chopra hurling javelins endlessly on dusty fields while his friends chilled at the local chai tapri, or Sachin Tendulkar, shadow-practising drives in hotel rooms after centuries on the field — greatness didn’t tap them politely in the middle, it found them, sweating, in the chaos of extremes.

But extremes alone can burn you out, right? Absolutely.

And that’s why the real skill is not about rigidly holding the middle ground — it’s about elegantly counterbalancing between extremes. Like a ballerina performing en pointe , gracefully poised on the tips of her toes, she looks effortlessly balanced. But inside those shoes? — toes quiver, tiny muscles twitch. Nerves hum. Bones whisper complaints. She is not frozen in symmetry. She is surfing chaos with precision.

Neuroscience backs this up: the brain doesn’t crave balance. It thrives on dynamic stability — constantly updating predictions, recalibrating inputs, adjusting for error. Cognitive scientist Andy Clark describes it as the mind being a “prediction machine,” always slightly off, but continuously correcting. So no, we’re not tightropes holding perfect stillness — we’re trampolines, built to bounce, flex, and adapt.

Meaning: we are built to wobble!

The trick is not to hold a static center — it is to master the art of counterbalance. Of sprinting and then stillness. Of obsession and then surrender. Periods of intense work, passion projects, followed by impromptu plans and chill weekends with your close friends, where you end up laughing uncontrollably over inside jokes that only make sense at 2am. That’s not imbalance. That’s design.

Maybe that’s why the accidental cocktail was so memorable — it was born from the extremes of randomness, friendship, honesty and a dash of vulnerability that somehow collided into perfection. Trying to replicate it with the same ingredients was like asking a firework to explode identically twice. That’s the trap we fall into when we chase balance— as if formula could ever outshine spontaneity.

So maybe what we need isn’t more balance, but more awareness of when to lean in, and when to lean out. To live with range. To choose intensity without apology, and rest without guilt. To sprint, to collapse, to rise again — all without breaking the delicate glass balls. Because life’s finest moments, like its most unforgettable cocktails, aren’t brewed in the lab of precision. They’re born in entropy. In reckless timing. In choosing risk over reason, and seasoning it with a pinch of madness and a splash of soul.

Live intensely, laugh ridiculously, love fiercely, and work passionately.

And when the wobble comes , as it always will, just think of the ballerina’s toes.

Not still. Not perfect. But masterfully alive.