THE LIFE I’VE BEEN GIVEN
My Extraordinary Ordinary Journey
There’s a quiet idea that took me years to grasp: maybe the point wasn’t to build the ideal life but to live fully the one already given to me.
I didn’t believe that. Not really.
For a long time, I thought life was something I had to shape. I envisioned how it should look, what it should prove. I needed to push harder, stand out, become more.
I measured myself against an imagined standard of who I ought to be, and when I didn’t meet it, I felt it. Bone-deep failure.
So, I pushed harder, enough to nearly break myself. None of it worked. If it wasn’t extraordinary, it didn’t count.
I missed what was right in front of me because I was too focused on what wasn’t.
Looking back, nothing that truly mattered to me came directly from those efforts. The work, the relationships, my children, my siblings, the moments that shaped me — they arrived unannounced. At odd times. Often, when I felt least ready.
One defining moment came in my early 20s when I slipped out to a market at 11 p.m., ran into someone I barely knew, and had a conversation that changed the trajectory of my work and career. How do you plan for that? You can’t.
Every life-changing moment happened that way.
I was just buying milk.
What changed wasn’t my circumstances. It was the moment I stopped.
I stepped away from the constant striving and, for the first time, really looked at my life as it was.
Not as a project.
Not as something to be engineered.
And what I found was unexpected. The value I had been chasing wasn’t ahead of me. It was already here. In the ordinary moments I had overlooked. In the stillness. Because this life, exactly as it is, was mine.
That understanding felt profound. Important. It didn’t last. I tucked it away for later and kept going. I still thought worth was hard-earned. Something you proved to yourself, mostly.
By 24, I burned out completely. It felt like a collapse. Like a horse that had run too hard for too long and broke down just when it was supposed to perform. I had nothing left.
But that breaking point illuminated the prior revelation. A patient sentiment that drifted in and out of my life until it landed for good.
Until then, what exactly was I doing? Why the hurry? Who was I trying to be?
I realized I didn’t want anyone else’s life. I didn’t even want the version I had been pursuing.
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I just wanted my life.
As it was.
Not better or different.
That shift changed how I saw things. I began to understand how little control I had over outcomes, and instead of fearing it, I felt relief.
Life wasn’t something to conquer. It was something to embrace. And enjoy. Which led to: girl, lighten up!
Appreciation followed. Then love. Then gratitude.
Like everyone, I’ve lived through hard things.
Even in the darkest times, I was being guided. Not dramatically, just enough to keep moving. When everything fell apart, I didn’t ask why. I asked to be directed back to where I was supposed to be.
And I was.
Over time, I saw a pattern. The less I fought my life, the more it opened up.
The more I accepted it, the more it gave. Not always how I expected, but in ways that mattered.
And that brings a kind of peace that’s hard to explain. It doesn’t remove struggle or erase loss, but it changes how those things are held. They become part of the whole.
I see people now caught in the same loop I often lived in — chasing more, forcing situations, then wanting to disappear when things didn’t work out. I understand it.
But I also recognize what’s being overlooked and undervalued.
The shift isn’t about getting more.
It’s about seeing differently.
You live the life you’re given.
From there, something else happens. An expansion of sorts. You start giving, not to prove anything, but because you recognize what’s already there.
Gratitude spills outward.
The life you have — at least in my experience — isn’t something to escape. It’s something to enter.
I missed it for years.
I’m here now.
Rhonda Talbot on life, maturity, gratitude, truth, humility, beauty, love, struggle, peace, synchronicity, and freedom
