You could theoretically change your life at any moment. Move here, date that person, work on that startup, write that blog, dye your hair, adopt a dog. Should I stay, should I go? I don’t know if this agency is freedom or burden. Perhaps all the best things are both.
reminds me of the charles broskoski quote that goes something like... and when nobody waits for you at night, and when nobody calls you in the morning - do you call that freedom or loneliness?
agency grows through practice, not theory. Cultivating individual agency means starting things before they feel ready. It means having a bias toward action.
the fear of commitment is really a failure of agency, of taking full responsibility for our choices and their consequences. A kind of learned helplessness dressed up as freedom. I think that’s why commitment feels so heavy to some people. You’re accepting full authorship of something, and you can't blame circumstances or timing or compatibility for... See more
Even if you work inside the system, you don’t need to let the system work inside of you. And if you summon up the boldness to go in a different direction, others might even surprise you by following along.
learn to notice what your awareness is doing, because a collapse in awareness is a clear sign that you are losing the capacity to make a new choice, becoming more like a train that can only run on pre-laid tracks rather than, let’s say, a drone that could go anywhere. If you notice this, first re-expand your awareness by noticing more of the space... See more