"The smallest act of authorship is a question." - Ken Woodward

Nine months ago, Naomi Campbell of the Right Question Institute said one word that gave me a word I had been searching for: agency. I felt it land in my body before I understood it in my head. I promised my listeners I would come back with an answer. This episode is that answer.

Agency is the authorship of our own lives. Not control, which none of us has. Authorship is something smaller and more stubborn. It is the refusal to be only what the world wrote about us. And the smallest act of authorship, it turns out, is a question. The moment we ask, we stop receiving the world and start writing on it.

I carry two stories from my walk across Washington. A man I call Doc, raised by a mother who would not let him absorb anything without questioning it first. A woman I call Pearl, who answered the worst day of her life by building a neighborhood for the children coming up behind her.

Agency is inherent. It can be suppressed, but never removed. The whole question is whether we pick up the pen.

This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.

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