I will talk about limited agency until I am blue in the face.
Limited Agency:
The truth that we are decision-makers inside circumstances we did not choose.
I go on and on about it because the lie on one side is that everything is possible. And the lie on the other side is that nothing is.
Wellness culture promises total transformation. Reinvent yourself. Optimize your morning routine. Become a better parent, better partner, better citizen, better core-strength-having human by Tuesday. If you’re not flourishing, perhaps you haven’t tried waking up at 4:30 a.m. to manifest more enthusiastically.
Despair, on the other hand, tells a different story. Why bother? Nothing will change. The future is sealed. Any effort is meaningless.
But most of us do not live at either extreme. We live in the space between.
It’s not true that everything is possible. We have bodies that keep trying to kill us. Bank accounts that disagree with our dreams. Children who lose their shoes while wearing them (that will never stop surprising me). Grief that doesn’t evaporate because we downloaded a mindfulness app.
And it’s not true that nothing is possible. There is almost always a small square footage of choice available to us. A next right thing (with a nod to my dear Emily P. Freeman). A conversation we can have. Closing the 47 tabs open in our brain (or at least 3 of them). Going to bed without scrolling. Making the doctor’s appointment instead of googling your symptoms. Going for a walk or at least sitting outside with the sun on your face for a few minutes.
Our work is to find that space—not the fantasy version of our lives, not the catastrophic version—but the most honest one.
May you be freed from “everything.”
May you be spared from “nothing.”
May grace meet you in the middle.
And DEAR GOD may tomorrow wait its turn.
What is possible today?
There's a quote, I think from The Brothers Karamazov..."if everything is possible then nothing is true."
***
Today may come the circumstance
in which I am to die,
and in unhappy happenstance
be taken to the sky
to abide for all Eternity
in unshadowed light,
but really I must say that I
would rather stay and fight,
defending this last bloody ground
with all that I have left,
for I do love my surround,
this burlap warp and weft
that perhaps I didn't choose,
but that I am loath to lose.
Thank you for this reminder, Kate. And thank you for the art that accompanies this…it is perfect! It is about finding that balance between the catastrophic and the fantasy, living in the shades of grey in a world that insists on black and white.