“Purity of heart is to will one thing.” ~ Kierkegaard
For thirteen weeks we walked through Franklin’s virtues, one discipline at a time, one habit at a time. What began as a simple chart has become something deeper: the quiet formation of agency.
Temperance sharpened clarity.
Silence refined intention.
Order stabilized the day.
Resolution anchored purpose.
Industry strengthened effort.
Sincerity unified thought and word.
Humility grounded the work.
Each week built capacity.
Each discipline strengthened the will.
And now we arrive at the virtue beneath all the virtues: Agency — the power to direct your life rather than drift through it.
Franklin understood this even if he never named it explicitly. His “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection” was more than a behavioral checklist; it was a blueprint for constructing the kind of character capable of choosing well. “And to this habit,” he wrote, “I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens.” The habits gave him influence because the habits gave him agency.
Agency is the turning point. It is where a person stops living by accident and begins living by design.
“A man is what he does with what he can do.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
The Essence of Agency
Agency is not a mood, a burst of energy, or a motivational slogan. It is the formed, disciplined capacity to act on what is right, true, necessary, and aligned with purpose. It is freedom made functional.
Theodore Roosevelt said, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”
That is agency.
The refusal to stay on the sidelines of your own life.
Winston Churchill added, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
Agency carries weight.
You cannot direct your life without bearing the responsibility for the direction you choose.
St. Augustine sharpened the theological edge:
“There is always within us a free will — but it is not always good.”
Agency alone is not virtue; it must be governed by rightly ordered loves.
Thomas Aquinas rooted this deeper still. The human person bears the imago Dei — endowed with mind, will, and the capacity to choose. Agency is not an accident. It is a gift. And gifts carry obligations.
Agency is not simply the ability to act.
It is the responsibility to act in accordance with truth.
This is why the Franklin virtues matter — they clear the ground so that agency can grow.
The Key Aspects of Agency
Each virtue you practiced these past thirteen weeks built one of the capacities below. Agency is where they converge. These are not motivational ideas; they are the structural beams of a directed life.
1. Intention — The End of Drift
Agency begins with direction.
Not vague hope. Not half-formed desire.
Direction.
Intention is the moment you decide that your life will not be shaped by convenience, accident, or impulse. It is the conscious refusal to be carried by the currents of culture, technology, or habit.
Franklin built habits so he could think clearly and act decisively. Roosevelt prepared himself for opportunities so that, when the moment came, he was ready. Intention is the disciplined mind choosing a course and taking responsibility for it.
Without intention, life becomes a long improvisation.
With intention, it becomes a steady march.
2. Responsibility — The Weight of Self-Government
“The price of greatness is responsibility.” Churchill’s line cuts straight to the heart of agency. There is no greatness without the willingness to bear weight.
Responsibility means:
- You own your choices.
- You own your distractions.
- You own your time.
- You own your reactions.
- You own your failures.
- You own the cost of becoming who you intend to become.
Modern culture trains people to outsource responsibility — to systems, to circumstances, to mood, to others. Agency pulls it back inside: This is my life. It will not steer itself.
Responsibility is not punishment.
It is the dignity of adulthood.
3. Discipline — The Strength That Carries Intention Forward
Intention sets direction, but discipline carries it.
It is the long walk in the same direction, even when motivation is gone.
Franklin’s entire system depends on discipline — daily practice, daily review, daily correction. Roosevelt said that courage, honesty, and common sense were indispensable; without them no brilliance could compensate. All three are muscles of discipline.
C. S. Lewis observed, “Courage is the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
That is discipline: courage applied to the daily, the mundane, the unglamorous.
Discipline is not harshness.
It is stewardship of your own potential.
4. Attention Stewardship — Guarding the Gates
Agency collapses when attention collapses.
We live in a world arranged to erode attention — devices designed to harvest it, entertainment designed to numb it, news designed to agitate it. G. K. Chesterton once noted that modern freedom is often rooted in fear, a desire to escape responsibility rather than shoulder it.
Kierkegaard warned that people demand “freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” That line could have been written yesterday.
A distracted mind cannot exercise agency.
A scattered mind cannot govern itself.
To reclaim your attention is to reclaim your will.
Attention stewardship is the new frontier of self-governance.
Your attention is your agency.
5. Courage — The Harder Good
Agency requires courage because agency requires action.
Not the loud, performative courage of declarations, but the quieter courage of beginning, persisting, and telling yourself the truth.
The courage to confront vice.
The courage to pursue virtue.
The courage to face your own weaknesses honestly.
The courage to act before you feel ready.
The courage to bear the consequences of your choices.
Roosevelt’s arena speech is the anthem of agency.
Agency falters the moment fear chooses for you.
6. Self-Government — The Crown of All Virtues
Self-government is the culmination of the Franklin virtues and the essence of agency. It is the interior order that allows a person to govern himself rather than be governed by appetite, mood, impulse, or distraction.
Aquinas wrote that man images God through intellect and love — through the capacity to choose. Augustine said the will becomes truly free when it serves righteousness.
Self-government is freedom with form.
Freedom with direction.
Freedom with duty.
Freedom that becomes character.
Franklin experienced this firsthand. His habits gave him “weight with my fellow-citizens” because self-governance produces trustworthiness.
A self-governing person is steady.
A self-governing person can be trusted.
A self-governing person carries his own life with dignity.
Agency is self-government in motion.
Conclusion — A Directed Life
For thirteen weeks you trained muscles you couldn’t see. You practiced disciplines that shaped your will. You built habits that strengthened your capacity to choose. What started as a chart became a formation of character.
Now the structure falls away.
The pages are ending.
But the work is only beginning.
Agency is the moment you stop waiting
and start moving.
Agency is the moment your life becomes
a deliberate act.
This is the turning point.
This is where direction begins.
This is where a person becomes someone trustworthy, capable, grounded, and alive.
You have agency.
Use it well.
Chase The Kangaroo 
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