{"id":482368,"date":"2026-05-13T09:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482368\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:58:13","slug":"laura-kennedy-i-left-london-because-it-had-become-overwhelming-and-expensive-now-im-back-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/482368\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Kennedy: I left London because it had become overwhelming and expensive. Now I\u2019m back \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost three years ago, I left London<\/a> because it had become an overwhelming place to live. It was too fast, too expensive. It was too relentless. I\u2019d begin my days rammed on to the Tube with coughing, spluttering, cantankerous and overstretched people en route to some office or other and think \u201cthis just cannot not be it\u201d. A good life couldn\u2019t possibly look like this \u2013 living in a place where it felt as though everything was happening all the time, and you were too tired or underpaid to engage in most of it. A good life cannot leave you feeling worn so thin, as though a moment of stillness would be a crime or an impossibility. My focus was always being shoved on its own momentum toward the next thing. Next week, next quarter, next year. Any time but now.<\/p>\n

I decided to leave. I moved to Australia<\/a>, and it was the right decision. For an Irish person, Australia<\/a> is enshrined in culture as a sort of inherited promise. It represents the good life, and for good reason. What I found there was that the country does largely honour the promise \u2013 sun, space, ease, affordability relative to other countries. It places different expectations on you and offers a different pace of living. The primary thing you notice when you live in Australia is that everyday life just offers less resistance.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0I never thought I wanted to live in Australia and now I\u2019m struggling to leaveOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Yet here I am back in London three years later, and it\u2019s difficult to explain precisely why when so many people yearn to go in the other direction. I left London because it felt like too much. I\u2019ve returned for the same reason, despite hoping to live in Australia again one day if I can. London is the sort of place that offers treasures if you\u2019re willing to run through walls, and that can get old quickly. Australia makes space for you \u2013 all comfort and accommodation in contrast to London\u2019s friction and high demand. So here I am beginning again, again. <\/p>\n

What I learned in Australia \u2013 apart from the skill of perspective, the value of recreation and the fact that everyday life can function well while being on average easier than in Ireland and the UK \u2013 is life can be too comfortable there if you let it. I don\u2019t mean life there contained no struggle or suffering; more that the convenience of my Australian life made me less courageous and more inclined to stay where I was comfortable. <\/p>\n

Some internal friction \u2013 the sort we feel when making ourselves uncomfortable to achieve a goal, or when free-falling into the unfamiliar \u2013 is necessary for life to feel meaningful. Too convenient an existence can flatten us. A little striving keeps us from getting lost inside ourselves. That brings its own form of friction \u2013 the kind that dulls you over time. It\u2019s not the same as being unhappy, but it can make you unrecognisable to yourself.<\/p>\n

We tend to think of friction as something to be eliminated even though we know, really, it isn\u2019t optional. Tug one source at the root and it emerges somewhere else like the incorrigible weed it is. It\u2019s a crucial part of the positive force that pushes us to strive for things, hope for things and make changes. Friction does us a favour \u2013 it escalates until we become more uncomfortable than we are afraid. It\u2019s the thing our brain snags on and drags us back to again and again, until we decide to act on it.<\/p>\n

For almost three years, Australian life was kind to me in a way major European cities never have been. It left me time to think, to do volunteer work and to spend more time outdoors than I ever had before. For a time, it was an antidote to all the resistance that had made my previous life in London so ceaselessly grinding. I got comfortable, which at first was a balm and a novelty. Slowly, I became less inclined to tolerate real discomfort in pursuit of meaningful things. I decided to come back after realising the choice is not between an easy life and a hard one but between different kinds of pressure. There\u2019s always friction \u2013 we\u2019re lucky when we can choose the kind we want to live with. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s good to give yourself a bit of a fright from time to time; to feel unsettled by your own inclination to make a change. \u201cHas it knocked anything loose for you?\u201d a friend of mine asked when we saw one another today for the first time since I went to Australia. My grandmother used to say: \u201ca change is as good as a rest\u201d. She was wrong \u2013 that\u2019s the sort of thing exhausted Irish women said to one another back when choice didn\u2019t come into the equation. Rather, a change is as good as a shake, a fright or an earthquake. A change can knock something loose. The luckiest among us can only choose their friction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost three years ago, I left London because it had become an overwhelming place to live. It was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1128,9,10,13,14,2215,6,2213,11,12,130,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-482368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-for-you","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-irish-abroad","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-london","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}