Granting agency
When someone makes a commitment to action, we can distrust them, or grant them agency.
It is worth checking the commitment. Are you sure? This is a big task.
If they say yes, even after we have challenged their commitment, now is the time to grant them agency.
People are more likely to rise to possibility when held to that possibility than when we doubt and distrust. The same applies to children.
If someone has stated and reaffirmed a commitment to action and we deny them agency, this act is another subtle form of our domination over them.
If they then fail in their commitment and we delight in our rightness in predicting their failure, we continue to perpetuate this subtle domination, which carries the seeds of shaming.
These power moves are sneaky. Almost everyone I know, including myself, plays this game in some form or another. The more aware we are of the subtlety of these forms of domination, the easier it is to unplug.
If we want to end a world of winner-takes-all, exploration, and supremacy over others, then we must catch ourselves in the act of even the tiniest participation in the very same game.
We will fail many times. The point is to keep learning.
This applies to those who have dominated and those who have been dominated. When those who have been dominated and exploited use the very same tricks and tools of the dominator, they become the dominator to others. And the cycle continues.
Photo Taken May 22nd 2024