There are forces that keep us from exercising our full agency.
Some are external and outside the locus of our control—genetic conditions, natural disasters, accidents that alter the course of a life. Most, however, dwell within: our emotions, thoughts, and attitudes. These interior elements determine whether we wield our agency fully or surrender it.
When our inner structures are sound, we act decisively and present our best selves to the world. When they are fragile, life happens to us. We react instead of acting, soon discovering how unsympathetic the world can be to passive souls.
A lack of agency shows up in many forms. In this essay I explore three of the most common: victimhood, passivity, and spiritual bypassing.
Victimhood
If you are behaving in self-defeating ways, if you are miserable, out of sorts, hurt, anxious, afraid to be yourself, or in other similar states which immobilize you, if you aren’t functioning in a self-enhancing manner, or if you feel as if you are being manipulated by forces outside of yourself, then you are a victim—and it is my contention that your own victimization is never worth defending. — Pulling Your Own Strings, Wayne Dyer
Victimhood is the belief that one’s life and outcomes are controlled by outside forces, leading to a sense of helplessness and resignation. This mentality undermines the individual’s belief in their ability to change their circumstances or influence their life.
For instance, someone who constantly blames their upbringing, social circumstances, or relationships for their struggles without taking proactive steps is stuck in victimhood.
At its root lies the belief that nothing I do matters.
And they cede this responsibility to external factors when things don’t go their way instead of reflecting on their own choices and actions.
Even more perverse is that some of these individuals derive pleasure from their victim status. They collect pity from others as validation for their powerlessness, using sympathy as a substitute for action.
This is because deep down, they know that they could be doing something, but this awareness creates internal conflict that they quell by seeking external confirmation of their helplessness.
Spending time around such people can be a painful chore, as negativity is all that oozes from them whilst simultaneously demanding constant reassurance and positivity so as to bear their own existence — energy vampires depleting others of their vitality.
Their self-absorption often leads to narcissism, as they believe that their ‘suffering’ makes them unique and special. This leads to a lack of empathy, as they cannot step outside their own narrative to connect with others’ experiences.
Passivity
Passivity often originates in childhood dysfunction, particularly from controlling or overprotective parenting. When parents impose their will on every aspect of a child’s life, they gradually erode the child’s capacity for independent thought and decision-making. These parents may act from their own unresolved issues—abandonment fears that drive them to maintain control—or from genuine but misguided protective instincts.
Some parents mean well, wanting to shield their children from the world’s harsh realities, but in exercising this care they often overstep, coddling their offspring instead of properly guiding them to build their own internal maps through which they would navigate the world.
This protection often stems from the parent’s discomfort with witnessing their child’s suffering, even when said suffering could be instrumental to the child’s growth and character development. This form of care also ignores the fundamental truth that parents are not eternal guardians.
The greatest gift parents can give their children is thus not a sanctuary free from all ill, but a blueprint for building their own once they are grown. The richer the blueprint, the greater the offspring’s ability to transcend challenges, even those that their parents never faced.
Overbearing parents often sow the seeds of distrust in their offsprings’ hearts. They can’t make decisions without consulting mommy or daddy as they have been taught to defer to authority, even when a situation may benefit from their input.
And this condition festers into adulthood, where mommy and daddy become the authority figures in their lives — employers, government, strangers, or even lovers — who they transfer their dependence to, even when such people don’t have their best interests at heart.
The world exploits this vulnerability. Passive individuals become targets for manipulation, abuse, and exploitation. Even when mistreated, they lack the will to stand up for themselves, having been conditioned to accept others’ decisions passively. They drift through life like NPCs, seemingly without agency or authentic will.
Yet human beings are not meant to be NPCs. Unexpressed traits find ways of surfacing no matter how suppressed they may be, often destructively — resentment, anger, or internal torment. It becomes a knife that twists endlessly within one’s soul, amplifying the torment born of an unspent will.
On its deathbed it will again recall everything adding the interest accumulated over all that time. But it is precisely in this cold, loathsome half-despair, half-belief, in this conscious burying oneself alive from grief for forty years in the underground, in this assiduously produced and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness of one’s position, in all this poison of unsatisfied desires penetrating inward, in all this fever of hesitations, of decisions taken forever, and repentances coming again a moment later, that the very sap of that strange pleasure I was talking about consists. — Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The passive person harbors tremendous resentment toward the external forces that seem to control them, never recognizing that their powerlessness stems from their refusal to trust their own authority and act according to their will.
Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing is a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.
Failing to take charge of your circumstances when they are well within your control while assigning meaning to your lack of accountability is the essence of spiritual bypassing.
It is easy to demonize money as evil, merely scapegoating it when you spend mindlessly, not even following simple advice on maintaining one’s financial standing.
It is easy to call a person who lifts superficial and self-obsessed when you are fat, immobile, and have never picked up a heavy circle, put it down then repeat.
These things do corrupt, but this depends on the internal design of the man who engages them. Corruption often occurs when one becomes obsessed — when the concept of ‘enough’ fails to reach them.
But with a spiritual bypasser, the actual problem is in avoiding the work that deep inside their soul they know they need to do but avoid doing nonetheless. Thus, to soothe their ego, they come up with a reason to justify their inaction. This is merely just laziness. I posit that spiritual bypassing is a worse form of laziness because one is absolving themself of responsibility to an entity or ideal that cannot be explained.
This mysterious aspect of the spiritual functions to add to their solace as it enables them to make an easy justification that things are ‘just are’.
Spiritual bypassing often serves to avoid painful emotions or traumatic experiences. Someone might meditate obsessively or repeat affirmations to avoid confronting grief or trauma, telling themselves they’re “too spiritual” for negative emotions. This approach is like placing a bandage over a broken bone—it may hide the injury but doesn’t promote healing.
The pain remains, and vital energy gets wasted in avoidance rather than directed toward genuine recovery.
Conclusion
When we contemplate our place in the vast universe, we might feel overwhelmed by our apparent insignificance. We are mere specs of dust with spec-sized problems on a rock floating through space. This cosmic perspective can lead to existential anxiety about our inconsequential nature and the universe’s apparent indifference to our struggles.
Or perhaps the realization of your apparent insignificance in the cosmos may perhaps free you. Your burdens, anxieties, and worries as in the grand scale of your finite life, won’t matter in the end. Each moment, whether significant or insignificant, each win or failure, will eventually lose your name tag. This freedom can inspire us to act with greater courage and authenticity.
Existence is a gift, a finite opportunity that you should maximize. This means taking an active role in shaping our lives within our capabilities and constraints. Being agentic means acting intentionally to create desired outcomes, even when we know that despite our best efforts, life will do what it does.
That is why I believe embodying a process-driven but outcome-detached mindset is of essence. Popular phrases like ‘ball up top’, ‘charge it to the game’, ‘until death all defeat is psychological’, and ‘we ball no matter’ capture this spirit perfectly. Though simple, they express defiance against unfavorable circumstances and embody the indomitable human will.
They represent something profound: the refusal to be defeated by fate’s harsh dealings. When life deals us a difficult hand, we acknowledge the setback as part of the game and continue playing. The game remains playable regardless of the cards we’re dealt. Life goes on, and we must choose whether to engage actively or drift passively through our finite time here.
The choice, ultimately, is ours.