I tend to be an agreeable person. I'll define agreeableness here as the tendency to avoid conflict and defer to the needs of others over your own needs. I often seek not peace, but the avoidance of conflict. I'll bend myself into uncomfortable positions to avoid someone thinking badly about me. If you combine this with my general lack of fiery opinions these days (I'm working on it. Having an opinion in public requires conflict.) then you get a person who seems really chill and laid back, but is in fact quite worried much of the time.
I've come to an accord with much of my agreeable nature. It's helped me maintain political neutrality while in a world that's lost its mind. It's helped me to get along with people I have very little in common with. Where it becomes a problem is in my marriage, where petty conflicts need to be had and resolved not smoothed over, and where it comes into contact with my ambition.
I want to be an agentic person. We've been blessed by God with the ability to choose good from evil. This is agency as typically understood in religion. I found a better definition of agency while listening to Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom podcast with guest George Mack (episode 919, published March 24, 2025). The definition that coalesced in my mind as I listened to that episode was "Happen to life. Don't let life happen to you." This version of agency is much, much more active. It's about becoming a force in life and not just a decider. This idea stuck with me.
Around that same time, I was looking for another job. I absolutely hate looking for jobs. Job hunting is part comparison game, part smiling through your teeth, and part stressful despair party. It's hell. This time, however, it got easier. Earlier in the year I had read "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover" by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. I had learned how to tap into the aggression that I'm capable of. This was one stepping stone. The other was agency. Having the mindset of attack, along with the commission to get out there and happen to life was the rocket fuel I needed to put my head down and go to work. I was able to use the time I had, to sit for hours sending out applications, then to go in person and talk to the people who could hire me. In the past I would've been worried about inconveniencing them, or being a drain on their time. Now, I had the mantra "make your existence someone else's problem." If misused, this might seem psychopathic or rude, but for me it's the set of words I need to get me on my feet.
Be a nice person. Until it's time to stop being nice.
Then, fuck em up.
"The question, Raymond, was 'what did you want to be?'...Would you rather die right here, on your knees, in the back of a convenience store?" -Tyler Durden, Fight Club
It all comes back to death. If you can frame it in "what will happen if I stay where I am?" you can put that fear of death behind you instead of having it keep you where you are.
Accept that you can make choices. Accept that your life is your responsibility and yours alone. Take that weight, and go do something with it. Make your existence someone else's problem. Happen to life. To end with a quote from Rorschach from Watchmen "I'm not suck in here with you, you're stuck in here with me."