The psychologist Bessel van der Kolk defines agency as “the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, knowing that you have a say in what happens to you, knowing that you have some ability to shape your circumstance.” People who exhibit agency have been shown to be happier and healthier, and have a higher quality of life.

Combined with self-confidence, agency is the attitude that any problem can be fixed, given enough resources in the form of time, effort, and determination. This attitude rests either on a thorough knowledge of or training in what is to be done, or on the surety that such knowledge or training can be attained. This attitude is often transferable fro

Agency exists as a way of life, a reiterative activity of opening or foreclosing different possibilities of materialization of matter, not as a relation of push and pull aimed at imposing force on a mass. We are entangled with, constituted and transformed by the very processes we aim to transform.