Agency

The New York Times headline “agency” caught my eye in this article, as I tend to follow agency news working at a media & advertising agency. After reading the first few grafs of The Agency Moment, I quickly learned the piece was discussing a different type of agency.

The first Merriam-Webster definition of agency that I am familiar with is a business that provides a particular service, but the second was something interesting: the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power. 

The columnist David Brooks writes:

"Among the privileged, especially the privileged young, you see people who have been raised to be approval-seeking machines. They act active, busy and sleepless, but inside they often feel passive and not in control. Their lives are directed by other people’s expectations, external criteria and definitions of success that don’t actually fit them." 

“So many people are struggling for agency. They are searching for the solid criteria that will help them make their own judgments." 

"Agency is not automatic. It has to be given birth to, with pushing and effort…It’s having engraved inner criteria to guide action. The agency moment can happen at any age, or never. I guess that’s when adulthood starts.”

Take a moment to reflect on all of that, incredibly relevant to people in their 20s, and think of how it relates to you.