Dear Determinism,
Thank you for compelling me, those years ago, to raise my bed to its highest peg—for storage and a safe place for my head and arms to land when I began to crumble each night, debilitated and agency-less. The dust mites beneath that bed made hospitable companions as I was dragged amongst them daily to cry and cough and shake my hands in panic until they became numb. If you had not made me lift the bed early on, with the aid of my mother, I would have tried alone amidst one of those panics, and likely crushed my toes. But did you have to make it necessary at all? Could you not have left me to my simple sadness? Instead, you had to overtake it, escalate it, twist it, and so I lost control of my words and limbs and mind. .
Each day that year, the year with the bed, I wandered around my scoped world in search of some glittering compass, something to hang my hat upon. I saw only a blur, colors and shapes seen as if without my glasses, and I yearned to find agency. Astigmatism. Astigmatistic, I have found. A stigma, perhaps, self-inflicted—again, how perspective shifts. But now I realize it was you.
It was not the first time I’d been stuck inside this thought-built maze—somehow, in these hedges of my own creation, I had lost the map. You must have taken it, right? Somehow, some way, some place, you stashed my agency—why? I mean not to lament, of course (I would hate to get in your bad graces), but please, if you would not mind, I would love to hear about what may have gone into this action!
I do wish to empathize, however, for you have no agency of your own. You are simply the name we have given to the unfortunate system which puppets our lives. You will perhaps find this bemusing, but there are many who do not believe in your power. You, Determinism, are defined by many as a doctrine, as a dogma in which will is stolen and lives are preordained. Some tie this to religion—their trembling beneath some God, or gods—others, such as myself, see you as an assembly of every gene and memory and self we have ever been. None of which we can control. I can nearly hear your laughter at our insufficient definitions; would you mind enlightening me to the nuances?
Kind Regards
