Agency Without Control
We often judge decisions as good or bad only after outcomes appear. But agency does not always begin with certainty. This essay reflects on agency as responsiveness rather than control, and on how coherence can be felt even when direction is still forming.
Agency is often understood as the ability to decide clearly and in advance. Within this framing, free will appears as an internal capacity to choose correctly, ideally with confidence and foresight. A good decision is one that leads to a favorable outcome; a bad decision is one that does not.
This understanding of agency carries an implicit demand for certainty. It assumes that clarity precedes action and that value can be assigned to a choice before experience unfolds. Yet this assumption sits uneasily with lived experience. Most meaningful actions—creative, relational, ethical—do not arise from certainty but from responsiveness. We move, pause, revise, and adjust long before outcomes become visible.
When agency is judged primarily by results, the process by which choices emerge disappears. Responsiveness is mistaken for indecision. Revision is interpreted as error. The living movement of agency is flattened into a retrospective evaluation.
Direction Before Decision
This tension became visible to me while rearranging an office space. We began with a general sense of how the room might come together—not a detailed plan, but a picture. Early in the process, something we assumed would move suddenly felt as though it needed to remain where it was. We paused rather than forcing the change.
What followed was not a sequence of decisive steps but a series of provisional movements. We tried an option we knew would not be permanent. We left the space and returned. We made further adjustments. Later, something I had initially dismissed as excessive turned out to be exactly what the room required.
At no point did we know in advance which choices were “right.” The process was guided not by certainty but by sensitivity to fit. Looking back, I realized that I could not evaluate individual decisions as good or bad while making them. What I could feel, however, was whether we were moving toward coherence—or away from it.
The Limits of “Good” and “Bad” Decisions
The language of good and bad decisions presumes that value can be assigned prior to experience. It privileges prediction over participation and outcomes over process. While this framing offers a sense of control, it obscures how agency actually operates in lived contexts.
In domains where responsiveness matters—design, caregiving, conversation, creative work—agency is rarely exercised through single, decisive acts. Instead, it unfolds through attunement, revision, and the willingness to remain in contact with what is emerging.
When certainty is demanded too early, it often produces rigidity rather than clarity. The effort to decide correctly in advance can flatten sensitivity, replacing responsiveness with adherence to a plan. In this way, the pursuit of control can quietly undermine the very agency it seeks to secure.
Agency in the Resonant Spectrum Principle
Within the Resonant Spectrum Principle (RSP), agency is not defined as independence from context or control over outcomes. It is understood as directional responsiveness within a relational field.
From this perspective, choices do not originate from a sealed interior will acting upon an external world. They arise through ongoing sensitivity to coherence, tension, and fit as situations unfold. Agency is not exercised once, at the moment of decision; it is sustained across time through continuous adjustment.
Free will, in this sense, is not the freedom to determine results in advance. It is the freedom to remain responsive—to revise without collapse, to pause without failure, and to change direction without self-betrayal. Uncertainty does not diminish agency; it is the condition through which agency is enacted.
Resonance Is Not Agreement
This understanding of agency clarifies an important distinction within the RSP: resonance is not agreement. Agreement implies alignment with a predetermined position. Resonance refers instead to a felt sense of coherence that can persist through uncertainty, difference, and change.
In the example above, we did not agree with the original vision for the space, nor did we reject it outright. We stayed in contact with it while allowing it to transform. Direction emerged not through internal consensus or fixed intention, but through sustained responsiveness.
Agency, understood this way, does not require certainty or consistency of belief. It requires the capacity to stay with what is unfolding long enough for direction to become felt.
Reframing Free Will
When agency is understood as directional responsiveness, several familiar assumptions begin to shift. Changing course no longer signals failure. Not knowing no longer indicates weakness. Sensitivity becomes a form of strength rather than hesitation.
This reframing has implications beyond individual decision-making. It affects how we understand creativity, parenting, collaboration, and ethical action. Rather than emphasizing decisive control, it invites a practice of participation—one that trusts coherence to emerge through engagement rather than enforcement.
Moving Toward Coherence
I do not think we can know in advance whether a decision is good or bad. But we can feel when something is becoming more coherent, and we can notice when it is not.
Agency, then, is not the ability to choose correctly once. It is the capacity to remain responsive enough to move toward coherence as it reveals itself.
Related field note: Rearranging