I’m pretty sure there was no script. If there was a script, I definitely never saw it. In the very early days, there was for my part a lot of, “why?” Why, why, why, but seriously, why? There was a prolonged period of, “what if…” and a long list of things that got tried. (We jumped ATVs over people. Just sayin’.) Then there was a too-long period where I realized that when I multiplied my power of agency by my charisma I could achieve much mischief; never quite Evil per se, but rather than get myself into trouble I realized it was fun to get others to get us all into trouble. (I was aiming for “get themselves into trouble” but I usually missed that mark.)

Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you. Most famous people go off-script early, usually in more than one way.

~ Simon Sarris from, https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-most-precious-resource-is-agency

You know that stupid question, “if you could get a message to your younger self, would you and what would you say?” I think I finally—51.5 years on!—have a message which I definitely would send back to myself: “Make more decisions; don’t often go with the first idea you have.” Whether it was mental or physical or who-knows-what, I was too often fast out of the blocks at the sound of the starter’s pistol. But too rarely did I consider if I even wanted to be in the race. I was crawling, and one day I stood up and ran (according to my mom, and apparently saying “why? why? why? why?”) so I’m confident I had the agency thing sorted. But what was I seeking? To where was I running? And really, maybe just right here in this moment is sort of nice, no?

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