No, you aren't a free agent (whatever you may think)
The life commitments we all have
I have four teenagers at home, and two of them now drive. This is a huge blessing and makes my life simpler in many ways. Aaaand (in all candor) it’s sometimes a little hard. We have several cars that we all share as needed, again a blessing… and complicated.
Who has which car where, and when? Is there gas in it – and whose turn is it to fill it up? Who left all this trash in the back seat? And where on earth has my blue water bottle gotten to now?
You can perhaps relate.
One tricky part is the matter of an older sibling driving a younger sibling to or from an activity. For us, a certain amount of this is expected - part of the privilege of having the use of a car. Sometimes it goes fine and other times there is… pushback, shall we say. Everyone is very busy, after all, sometimes “too busy.” And there are times when no one (myself included) wants to drive 30 minutes roundtrip to pick the youngest up from soccer practice.
But this isn’t a post about parenting or tips about how to minimize friction when car-sharing with teens. It’s a post about who we are as humans and the life commitments we all have.
Today we experience ourselves as free agents, walking solo in the world, figuring out what we want to do and who we want to be. It starts at the earliest age and carries on from there. “Do you want the blue cup or the green?”, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, and “I added that song to my Spotify queue” all get at the same idea: in small ways and large, we see ourselves as masters of our own destiny. And at the end of the day, we’re responsible for – and answer to – only ourselves. “It’s a free country,” and we’re free to do what we want. We think a human is a creature defined by her autonomy.
This is a relatively new way to understand humans and the world… and it presents challenges. The biggest one is: the perspective simply doesn’t align with reality – with how our world actually operates. No matter what country you live in.
When I came onto the scene as an infant, I already had connections that pre-dated my arrival. I didn’t ask for them; they just were. I had a mother and father I didn’t choose, four grandparents, a sibling… and then eventually another. A location on the globe where I showed up. A shelter someone took me into, and nourishment I was provided. I was the beneficiary of a bunch of specific things in my particular place, without which I wouldn’t be here today - and the same is true of you. These facets of our existence simply are (and attenders to natural law know that “what is?” is the first question to start with.).
In each case, I partook in basic goods that I did not supply for myself. Life, health, and safety were granted me. I gained knowledge – how to speak and then read – from other people. I slept beneath a lovely, shiny mobile and had the benefit of beauty. I got a first taste of friendship when someone lined me up in playgroup alongside another toddler. I went down slide one day and experienced the good of play. Someone taught me to use a toilet and I grew in practical reasonableness. I was dependent. I’m still dependent today, in hundreds of ways, on the infrastructure and community that surround me and help me access the goods I need to live.
Point being: none of us is a free agent. We all share goods in common with others, in an infinite number of ways. We pursue the goods with and for and alongside others… and literally could not continue life without this interdependence. What food would you eat? What house would you live in? Who would you talk to? What book would you read? What clothes would you wear? As John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
And we don’t just get goods, we also contribute to the goods other people access. It’s the only way a community, a family, a school, a neighborhood, a country operates. If one kid takes all the bread and milk and leaves none for his sibling, the sibling eventually starves. We don’t do that. We give and receive goods back and forth in a family (some better than others) so everyone is fed. We have an obligation to our sibling to help them not die, and they have the same obligation to us. It’s a practical reality of dwelling together, accessing goods alongside each other. There are similar examples for ways – large and small – that we contribute as students in a school, citizens in a neighborhood, and beyond
As humans, then, we must live with the reality of common goods in mind. We have obligations to those who provide us with the goods that allow us to flourish, and they have obligations to us. The more we both attend to them, the more we all thrive.
So we do have autonomy as a human to some degree, and that’s a positive thing. It allows us to choose for the good. But our autonomy is – as a point of fact – limited; it only goes so far. You choose the blue cup over the green… but someone made the cup, and someone else offers it. You decide to become a teacher… but someone trains you, someone else provides the setting, and others receive the knowledge as students. You add a song to your Spotify queue… but someone made the music and someone else provided the technology. You were not the master of your destiny in all those cases, not really. You simply had your part to play, the choices you got to make in the midst of these interconnected elements.
My teenage driver dwells among these realities: she is able to drive, lives in a place that trains and allows her to do so. She has the use of a car and access to gas. She has places she can go. She has siblings who also have places they can (and must) go. The family shares the same benefits and constraints. All this simply is… and all this works together as a kind of system.
The call to drive a sibling can and should nest within all of that. And it is good.