Happiness and Agency *

I add * to my post title to mark a post with practical advice you can use....

Agency means "purpose for being" and is a very undervalued component of modern human life. In Nature, every living thing serves a purpose before it becomes food for other living things. There are no exceptions to this rule...

Humans in the days past, were the same as the rest of the living world. They used to practice different trades, be homemakers, organize and lead others, discover new things and new worlds for the benefit of the mankind. They used to belong to the hierarchy of society and through that, people of the past also belonged to the hierarchy of Nature.

We are different. Since the creation of consumer society and product advertising as we know it, humans started focusing on consumption as a way of expressing who they are. Gone are the role models in a society where everyone is "famous for 15 minutes" and other people are becoming just objects (think: Irreplaceable by Beyonce). People of all sexes are becoming irrelevant to each other because (among other things) most of us do not make any difference in the world.

But serving others is natural because it connects us to the world as opposed to consumership that promises to make us unique and make us different (separate, not the same as).

The life journey for human beings is a process of connection and integration - that is what humans across races, across time and cultures did over the millennia.

We start as babies and toddlers who are only present to their own needs, start learning compromise by school age, negotiate and learn until we start serving other members of our family, and develop ability to serve others slowly but surely.

Humans struggled to overcome barriers of race and culture over millennia, to move from a family to trusting people in a village, then city states, then nations and eventually federations that included people of different races, many different cultures... The history of human progress is a history of "making the circle bigger", racing towards the "oneness" as Buddha calls it.

Agency is a tool of connection and integration, of allowing you to connect to the outside world and become fused in a mutual benefit.

Agency puts you in a position to be useful, not only to yourself but to humanity at large.

To achieve Agency, one doesn't have to know "their purpose" - there may or may not be such a thing. Agency is not about what you choose to do - it is about how many other people can you serve, how many people can benefit from your existence.

So how does one start on the path to agency? It is a fairly simple process - ask yourself if you are "serving others" in a way that benefits their lives. If you're not serving other people, are you serving animals, plants, environment because this is "serving". If the answers are No, you can start small by choosing to focus on someone else's life, someone else's problem that you may have a skill to solve.

Your contribution doesn't need to be life changing or even very valuable. You could take someone's dog out for a walk or do a mitzvah for a stranger.

To find a more sustainable outlet, consider volunteering for a cause you find important. You could spend 3 hours per week assisting others but it could profoundly change the quality of your life because you won't just focus on another human - you get a break from focusing on yourself.