Agency
Essentially, what I’m talking about, what I’m circling ever
nearer and nearer to is agency. Or maybe authority: owning
one’s life, for better and for worse, saying out loud, “This is
who I am, this is who I’m not, this is what I want, this is
what I’m leaving behind.”
In my experience, our culture teaches men to do this
quite well. Women, it seems, have a much trickier time with
it. It’s only quite recently that women have even been
permitted to ask these questions, and we’re just getting the
hang of it, many of us, fumbling and awkward—really,
really? Me? Are you sure?
Yes, darling, I’m sure. You get to tell the truth about
what you love and who you are and what you dream about.
We’ll learn this new path together.
What I’m learning is that you have to stop doing a whole
lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you
really are. Many of us go years and years without even
asking these questions, because the lives we’ve fallen into
have told us exactly who to be and what to love and what to
give ourselves to.
As I look back, in many instances, I simply followed the
natural course of things. And great things happened, mostly.