This is on my mind a lot -- on the one hand, we are unspeakably small cogs in the machinery of the world, and nothing we do matters on the macro.  On the other hand, you can view every act as a thing itself, echoing into eternity, and it's the act and not its consequence that matters.

There are surely other ways of looking at it, but that seems the principal dichotomy that we have to navigate between, or else go mad.  Perhaps an inability to come to terms with the left-hand side of the gradient is what leads people to become murdering psychopaths.

elvismercury

mostly_harmless

The Riddle of Luigi Mangione

Mhh. I would say agency is what I feel when I wake up and feel a strong motivation to follow my plans for the day because I think it actually matters in the long run.

So basically, for me, agency is about believing that what I do matters. But it doesn't mean that I can't also believe that there are limits to how much it matters. 🤔