agency

This is what I infer when I see someone who is comfortable in their unique strangeness, too. There probably exists someone who enabled that evolution of personality. A parent, a friend group, a spouse. It is rare for people to come into themselves if no one is excited and curious about their core, their potential. We need someone who gives us space... See more

The truth is, becoming often begins in a moment of lack and a glimpse of difference. You meet someone vivid, and you realise you’ve been blurry. You hear someone speak with clarity, and realise your own voice wavers. In that moment of contrast, in the quiet sting of comparison, you begin to articulate a new self and name the shape you want to grow ... See more

Not all houses age like this. For it to happen, the mathematician and architect Christopher Alexander writes, the design must allow you to “mess around with it and progressively change it to bring it into an adapted state with yourself, your family, the climate, whatever.” Often, modern houses make this harder. They force you to live inside a prepl... See more

The logic is simple. Most people ask “Can I have a raise?” or “Can I get a free upgrade?” The framing of these questions allows room for a simple “No,” and when you’re asking for something wild (e.g., “Can I get into the VIP section with only a GA ticket?” ) the answer ought to be “No.” By reframing all your requests with “What will it take” you ge... See more

The reason having Maud in my life made me more agentic was that it was the first time I experienced what it means to surrender to my values. I had a lot of idiosyncratic opinions and values when I was younger, too, but I held onto them in a rather flimsy way. Whenever things got too hard or people disapproved of what I was doing, I tended to give u... See more

Herzog, on the other hand, realized that film school was just one option among many. And the better solution, given his goals, was to take the money he had saved up by working as a welder and fund his own films, then send the films to festivals and use the prize money to fund ever more ambitious projects. He did the actual work and got rapid feedba... See more

At the heart of agency lies a willingness to question defaults. To be agentic, you have to treat “how things are supposed to be done” as just one option among many.

Or, no, that formulation isn’t deep enough. When I think about friends of mine who struggle to be agentic, the problem isn’t precisely that they do the default thing; it’s that they fail... See more

Most problems are solvable. But that doesn’t mean the solution will look like you hope it will; there will be trade offs. While Herzog made Signs of Life (1968), Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970), Fata Morgana (1971), Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), and Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), he had to live at home with his mom to afford making the f... See more