We Are Responsible

January 22, 2025

3-Item Status

• Current Location: Milwaukee, WI

• Reading: Dark Age by Pierce Brown

• Listening: River by Ibeyi

If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status.

Quick Notes

• New Work:

  • This week’s Let’s Know Things is about the Gaza Peace Deal

  • Yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Madman Theory

  • Last Friday’s piece for Writing & Such was about The Problem With “Just Sit Down and Write”

• Book: Approaching an aging milestone (or just thinking about growing older with intention)? Consider picking up a copy of my book How To Turn 39: Thoughts About Aging for People of All Ages.

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We Are Responsible

Many forces influence what we think and how we behave.

These factors can be pernicious and potent, but we’re responsible for our actions. We might be turned in a particular direction and told to walk, but we decide whether to take that first step, and whether to keep going after we’ve traversed a given distance, as well.

We’re responsible, to some degree at least, for the type of life we live.

We’re maybe not always the most responsible for these things: the arbitrary circumstances into which we’re born determine the opportunities to which we have casual access, and the number of hurdles we’ll have to jump just to enjoy the same default footing as some of our more (randomly) fortunate peers.

But we also decide whether and how to utilize those opportunities, how often we’ll attempt an especially ambitious leap, and to what degree we’ll invest in getting better at such efforts over time.

We can’t always adjust the ceilings and floors happenstance gives us, in other words, but we do have a lot of say over where within that preset space we spend most of our time, and where within it we ultimately end up.

Similarly, we’re responsible for the world we live in; with caveats.

The things we do throughout our lives, the effect we have on others, the ideas we believe and amplify (and those we muffle or condemn)—all of these variables, plus countless others, help shape our micro- and macro-scale contexts, including our relationships, our communities, and the nations (and planet) where we reside.

That’s a lot of responsibility.

And much of what we do, day in and day out, won’t feel like it’s part of some grand design, even though we could probably trace our decision to floss (or not) and vote (or not; or for someone else) and say something nice to a stranger (or not) down the chain to all sorts of cascading impacts, if we were really assiduous about it (and had unlimited surveillance capabilities).

My primary takeaway from thinking in these terms is that I have some degree of control over some elements of my life, and many of those elements will ripple outward and compound, whether I have any way of knowing about their secondary and tertiary (and beyond) impacts, or not.

That means (again, to me) I can choose how to invest my time, how to fuel my body and mind, in which general direction I’d like my habits and rituals to take me, and in what sorts of spaces, businesses, relationships, systems, people, ideas, and organizations I’d like to invest (in all sorts of ways) so that more of them bloom and flourish.

This is a stance that’s simultaneously empowering and disempowering, as it encourages me to focus my time and attention (and other resources) appropriately, in part by pulling back from areas in which I have little or no leverage or influence so I can double-down on those where I do; those in which my words, actions, knowledge, and money might have more impact.

Acknowledging a lack of control over anything can be difficult, but I find that reminding myself of all these ripple effects (and that I can reinvest differently in the future, as my potential impact surfaces change) helps me avoid purposelessly fixating on things over which I have no power, which will almost always come at the expense of things over which I do.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.

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Interesting Links

• What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?

• Survival in Paradise

• Mega Penguins

If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.

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Cool cool cooooooool.

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What Else

Two chapters down on the (first draft of the) new book, and I’m feeling good about things so far (which isn’t always a given!).

It’s been COLD here in Milwaukee the past several days; not uncomfortable cold, but legitimately dangerous, “go outside for more than 10 minutes and you will have frostbite on all your exposed skin” cold.

I like cold weather, but dang—this level of frigid kind of shuts everything down (even the ability to take a nice walk around the neighborhood), which is substantially less pleasant.

Looking forward to temperatures creeping above 0°(C) today (for the first time this week)!

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