I believe in Agency.
Letting every person make as many decisions about their life as possible.
I draw the line at full Agency when a choice or decision hurts another person, but until then I want us all to have discretion about what we do with our time and our energies. Let us each create the life we want.
Agency is just a fancier word for choice. I use it a lot, maybe to sound smarter than I am, but it really is the foundational value on which everything else I believe is hung. It’s like freedom, but less static. Freedom to me is lack of controls, whereas Agency implies action. Freedom allows choice but doesn’t demand it. Agency requires action, the act of choosing.
I talk to my children about intention too. Choosing with intention. To me, that’s even more what what Agency is about: choosing consciously and with intent for an outcome. You may not get what you hope, but you increase your chances, and that ups the odds of living a satisfying life.
I’ve not always used my Agency. In fact, I’ve been pretty negligent until recently about taking action to achieve a specific goal. Most of that is because I haven’t set intentions, but it’s also true that I haven’t had the courage to try for the ones I did set. I trusted the universe to take care of me, and that is a sure path to an underwhelming life. The universe is ambivalent to each of us; it’s not malevolent, it doesn’t want to screw us to the floor, but it’s not going to care if we’re unhappy with our lots either. It will march on in step with that taskmaster Time, blissfully ignorant of our frustrations.
No, it’s up to each of us to choose the life we want to live and then work to create it. Not one of us will get everything on which we set our sights – the universe seems petulant that way – but those who work most diligently and with clear eyes on their own prize will reap more of it than those of us who coast. 80-10-10 after all (80% of the time we get what we earn, 10% we get hosed, and 10% we get away with something).
We win at life when we don’t begrudge what we sacrifice for our choices, because instead what we gain with those very same choices fulfills us. We win when we make the benefit worth the cost, including the opportunity cost of foregoing other choices in favor of those that bring us the biggest returns.
My experiment in Agency is still in its nascent stages, and I am overwhelmed with doubts from time to time. But I have also experienced the exhilaration and excitement when I have a small success on the road to my larger intentions. Because I know that I made that little success happen.
I look forward to the rush I’ll get when I achieve one of my big goals.