The Power of Agency and the Art of Caring

 Agency - the capacity to act independently and do for oneself - lies at the heart of human dignity and self-worth. Yet we often find ourselves in complex roles that challenge our understanding and honor this.

I face this challenge with aging parents in their 80s and a child still at home. Like many in my generation, I've become a bridge between these generations, each deserving of support while maintaining their sense of agency. The risk lies in how we provide this support - do we enhance their independence, or unknowingly diminish it?

During recent family gatherings, I've noticed how easily we slip into language that undermines agency. "I feel sorry for..." floats across dinner conversations, well-intentioned but dangerous words. These expressions of pity, while meant to show care, actually create separation and diminish the other person's capacity and dignity.

Pity traps both the giver and receiver - the receiver risks adopting a victim mindset, while the giver maintains a false sense of caring from a safe distance. This is where the critical distinction between sympathy, empathy, and compassion becomes vital to understanding how to truly support others while preserving their agency.

Sympathy - feeling sorry for someone - keeps us separated and safe. Empathy, however, requires courage to step into the discomfort with another person, to truly understand their experience without trying to fix it. It asks us to listen deeply and bear witness to their journey.

Compassion takes us even deeper. It combines empathetic understanding with a willingness to ease suffering, but - and this is crucial - without taking away the other person's power to act. True compassion resists the urge to fix, even when that urge comes from a loving place. Instead, it creates space for the other person to express themselves and find their own path forward.

This brings us back to agency and raises a fundamental question: How do we serve others while preserving their essential capacity to do for themselves? Rachel Naomi Remen captures this beautifully: "Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul."

In the end, whether we're caring for aging parents or guiding our children, our challenge is to serve in ways that strengthen rather than diminish agency. This requires us to move beyond pity, transcend  sympathy, embrace  empathy, and practice compassion that honors the wholeness in each person.