Agency and Consequence

Sometimes I think about the war in heaven, and back to before that when we all presented ideas and possible plans to progress. Progression is messy by its nature, but I’m sure some of us tried to ignore that. For example, a plan that was fail proof and you could not possibly mess anything up. In that plan I would feel that I had nothing to contribute. It would be strange if something could occur entirely independently of everything else.  Would I enjoy living if I lived without making a mark on anything? No consequences, no mistakes, no rewards. I would be living, but not really.  It would be like a dream sequence where I could observe without changing anything, except instead of watching my own past, I would be living in everyone else’s present.  And yet, I  could not really be living. I have also contemplated that maybe life is a single player game, and I am playing against the board. Everyone else is also playing the same game, but in their own room and iteration. Then my actions don’t hurt anyone, but they do have predetermined consequences which will come back to change my experience. It does make you wonder about the designer though. Life feels random, and history looks endless, and the people around me, I assume, are like me, not part of the game but players of it. No one regenerates until the end.

Our reality is that we all have agency, and our agency can have profound effects on everyone else. The consequences are not always certain, and sometimes we do things with a hope they will result in one thing, but they end up resulting in another thing entirely. I have hope though that, to the righteous, all things work for good. Failure can strengthen, success can breed generosity, sorrows can lead to empathy, and knowing or unknowing harm can lead to repentance (which is a sacred experience I fully believe is good). So, with the appreciation of the good my agency can do me, I acknowledge the good that it can do everyone else around me for them. It is good that we all have it. I’m happy to share this boat with you.