agency

What does it mean to lead a high agency life?

I think that being high agency is both a circumstance and a choice:

1. Circumstance: Having the ability, the privilege, the mobility and the opportunities to take the reins of your life
2. Choice: Making consistent choices to take the reins

Circumstance

I was raised primarily by a domestic helper in Singapore — my auntie. Mine was a double income family, my parents both working to provide the money, and the main parental role in the house was filled by my auntie.

Looking back, I realize that my auntie wanted to see the world, but didn’t have the means to do it through vacation/holiday/travel the way Singaporeans are so obsessed with. The avenue she did have was via working as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and eventually Singapore. I’ve spent my entire childhood admiring her grit, determination and joy in exploration she’s put into her life.

As a Singaporean with one of the most powerful passports in the world, with a US education funded entirely by my parents, with everything I’ve seen of the world beyond my own life, I have far more privilege and mobility than most people. I’m blessed with circumstances that afford me high agency, built on top of other people’s labor and love. These circumstances don’t deliver the reins of my own agency into my hands — my auntie’s life is testament to choice over circumstance — but I feel that the privilege I hold obligates me to.

Choice

A couple things holding up my choices for high agency:

1. I think most things are a skill issue.
   1. Maybe I’m drinking the RGS Girl kool-aid, but I really do think most things are a problem of effort and skill. And even if they aren’t, I benefit from the attitude of learning through iteration and analysis. Lifelong learning!
2. Remembering that collaboration > competition, and that I can reach my goals without:
   1. taking the predefined route, or
   2. grinding in the rat race
3. Bird’s eye view > tunnel vision
   1. The tunnel isn’t the only way! I have lots of choices, choosing to make more choices for myself is also a choice! I can choose to open my own doors, or choose a window and not a door
      1. AKA: catastrophizing is not helpful
   2. EG: just because I’m working full-time in the US, doesn’t mean that I definitively chose my career over my family, that I’ll never see them again or that I’ll cut off my ties to my home.
4. High agency ≠ individualism
   1. Most problems are people problems, and those are also a skill issue
   2. Choose the happy chaos of community over the individually-controlled routine