Agency

The simple individualistic humanist frame treats the person as the seat of agency, the atomic unit of moral responsibility and choice-making.

I want you to see the limits of this model. Agency exists at micro- and macro-scales, the “person” is just one step on the ladder.

Agency can be formally defined as the subjective feeling of having control over one’s actions and their consequences…Put differently, you don’t feel as though life is just happening to you, with your only choice being to sit back and accept it all. Instead, you feel as though you are an active participant in your life; you are making things happen.

if i'd had more agency when I was younger,

I would have acted on some truly terrible decisions that I may never have recovered from

...which makes me suspicious of agency as the latest all-good panacea

Very simply put: don’t let action be the only thing separating you from those that are building the life you dream of. If you can take a small step today, do it. I promise it could be the one little tiny thing that kicks off a domino effect leading to great things later on.

You will never be fully ready and there will never be a perfect time. It’s genuinely not about waiting for the right time to do something when you’re ready, it’s about doing things before you’re ready just to make them exist. Those quotes that say “make it exist first, you can make it good later” are very true.