Jargogled Impressions.

Some insights feel obvious in hindsight—but only because we often fail to pause and reflect deeply when they first emerge. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about agency—the ability to act with intention, to shape our environment rather than be shaped by it. It seems simple on the surface, but it’s a profound foundation for living a mindful, deliberate life.

Just today, I was speaking with a colleague at work, and something struck me that shouldn’t have been surprising—how thoughtfully he is approaching the question of his child’s education. His mindfulness around observing the different education systems, what’s generally assumed to be true but isn’t about their efficacy, and what life choices that need to be taken to counter these. It reminded me that such observations and the resulting decisions, while deeply personal, are often taken passively by many of us. We accept what’s given rather than intentionally designing our lives, especially for something as critical as our children’s learning environments. And it goes beyond the direct decisions we take, which we do obsess over. It’s often the indirect decisions that we skip over due to carelessness or ignorance that grow to be more important than we deemed them to be. 

It made me reflect on a core idea: the hallmark of being human is the capacity to mold our surroundings, to shape our context instead of merely adjusting to it. Yet, in reality, many of us become passengers—accepting default paths—rather than drivers steering our own course. This is not always due to lack of desire, but often due to a lack of awareness. We let life’s decisions unfold based on the dominant logic or popular narrative, instead of stepping back to define what truly matters to us.

There’s a useful lens here. I believe people fall broadly into two categories:

1. Drivers, who actively shape the world around their values and needs.
   
2. Passengers, who adapt themselves to whatever the world offers.
   

The tension between the two often shows up when we think about outcomes. Passengers tend to seek peace in adapting to results that don’t go their way, saying, “It’s okay, I’ll adjust.” Drivers, on the other hand, focus on influencing the input variables—the decisions, the trade-offs, the data. But here’s the trap: outcomes and our approach to decisions should be decoupled. Contentment should not mean giving up on intentional living. We can be accepting of outcomes while still being thoughtful and deliberate in how we make decisions. This is where the clean category called out above breaks. And this is where the map becomes different from the territory.

To be honest, I haven’t always lived this way. Especially when it comes to life-defining choices—schooling for my kids, where we live, how we spend time—I’ve often defaulted to what’s most convenient or what aligns with prevailing logic, rather than actively crafting a life that feels uniquely ours.

When I say “uniquely ours,” I mean recognizing that every decision, every fork in the road, leads to a different version of our lives. The school you choose, the city you move to, the people you surround yourself with—these all compound over time. And the comparisons we often make with others miss the complexity behind each life path. We tend to compare outputs (someone’s success, someone’s happiness) without seeing the intricate web of decisions and trade-offs that got them there.

So what can we do?

We can get better at understanding the dimensions that go into decision-making. Too often, we rely on a narrow set of criteria. For instance, when evaluating a new job, we may think of salary, industry, or location. But what about the support system it offers your family? The alignment with your long-term values? The kind of peers you’ll be working with? The surrounding ecosystem?

These less obvious dimensions might not come naturally to us, but they often come naturally to others—people with different backgrounds, experiences, or cultures. That’s why talking to others, listening deeply, and learning from diverse perspectives is so powerful. It helps us expand our decision-making framework beyond what’s been hammered into us by popular culture. This is likely also why cultures that live in a multi-generational household tend to prefer adopting a more holistic understanding of what a meaningful and rich life means. 

At the end of the day, building a mindful, intentional life isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being conscious. It’s about collecting better inputs, questioning defaults, and having the courage to design your life—rather than letting it be designed for you.

Also, I’ve increasingly come to realize a subtle but powerful truth: stress amplifies in the absence of action. The longer we sit with uncertainty, the more our fears multiply and distort reality. Worry and fear feel insurmountable not because the world is always falling apart, but because in the absence of motion, our minds fill in the blanks with worst-case scenarios.

Action is not just a distraction—it’s agency in motion. It’s how we chip away at the mental clutter. It allows us to influence even small outcomes, and in doing so, often leads us somewhere unexpected—somewhere we didn’t even know we wanted to go, but in hindsight, is exactly where we needed to be.

What we think we want is often shaped by external cues—social media, peers, prestige. Our desires become memetic, copied from others, rather than deeply self-generated. Action acts as a corrective. It gives us first hand data. It anchors us in real-world feedback and helps us refine what truly matters, rather than chasing hollow goals.

Most importantly, action helps destroy the regrets that silently accumulate when we let life simply happen to us. When we choose passivity, we inherit outcomes that aren’t ours—and live with the quiet pain of not having tried. But when we act, even if imperfectly, we create a trail of intentionality. We move forward. We learn. We adapt. We heal.

Ultimately, this is a call to reclaim agency in our lives. Not in the loud, dramatic sense, but in the quieter, more powerful form: being mindful about the decisions we take, the trade-offs we accept, and the life we are building moment by moment.

Being human is about more than adaptation. It’s about authorship. The driver and the passenger both exist in us—but we get to choose who holds the wheel. And while the path ahead may never be fully clear, the act of choosing—of moving—is what shrinks fear, grows confidence, and creates a life that is truly our own.

So, note to self: take the next step, however small. Your future self will thank you—not necessarily for the outcomes, but for the courage to try and for the grit to keep trying irrespective of anything.