being human,  embodiment

On Choice and Agency

I had a birthday last week, a big one. Just thinking of the number provides a sense of pride – that I’ve made it this far and that I have enough years behind me to consider myself somewhat wise.

I’ll say it one last time, and then I think I won’t say it again, because this post is about choice and I must choose to be different in order to actually live differently … the last two years have been hard. But I made it through them. I was in a long dark night of the soul but I am through it. I have emerged, transformed, grown. And one of the things I’ve thought about recently is that I haven’t given myself enough credit for the grace in which I made it through those years. I am not special but I have far more to offer than I’ve offered up. I write here as though I’m confused. Sometimes I am, but often I’m not. I’m just more drawn to writing in my state of confusion as a way to make it all make sense. And I’ve forgotten that I’m an adult, damnit. I have been for over thirty years. I have choices. I have the agency to live any damn way I choose.

I’ve seen victim mentality and I do not choose it for myself. I see what victimhood does to the soul and the physical body and I will not go out like that.

Choice and agency are my birthright, your birthright. We have the right to claim them and live in them each and every day.

I believe that when we die, a great many things are revealed to us. I believe they are being revealed to us in this lifetime, we just live in such conditioning that we often can’t see life for what it actually is. We get so busy going through the motions that we can’t see what’s really happening around and inside of us.

Life has felt busy, really busy for the last few months. Work has consumed me. I’ve not done the things that nourish my soul: writing, hiking, journaling, reading. Now that it’s July and life has slowed down a bit, I’m claiming those activities, that nourishment again.

Choice and agency, a simple concept, and an important one for a well-lived, conscious life.