Where’s Your Agency?

In my World Literature course, we continued reading texts that explore the Divine and the Human. One of our selections, the Bhagavad Gita, teaches that our desires cloud our path. When we are bound by craving, fear, or confusion, we often do nothing. And we tell ourselves this stillness is at worst, not harmful, and at best, discipline.

But the reality looks different. We sit stuck on the couch scrolling. We fill every free moment with distraction. We even put others first, sometimes out of real love, but also as a way of avoiding the harder work of tending to our own needs. On the surface, this looks calm, patient, even sacrificial. But in truth, we’ve surrendered our agency — not to God, not to wisdom, but to the weight of our ungoverned feelings.

Augustine describes this same loss of freedom. In his Confessions, he writes about how desire leads to habit, habit hardens into compulsion, and compulsion chains the soul. What looks like restraint can actually be bondage — the absence of agency dressed up as control.

This is why the distinction between passivity and discipline matters. Both may look the same from the outside — quiet, non-reactive, measured. But discipline is not passive. It is an act of intention. It chooses to wait. It chooses to hold steady. It chooses faith over fear, freedom over compulsion. Discipline is action done on purpose.

The deeper question is: What’s driving my stillness? Is it avoidance, or is it intention?

That question is the beginning of discernment. If you don’t know how to answer that question, it may be time to talk because discernment is not something we always figure out alone. Coaching creates space to sort through the noise, name what’s really happening, and begin practicing the kind of agency that leads to freedom.