Maybe You're Not Actually Trying
11 comments
·November 16, 2025Etheryte
pwillia7
I think it makes sense in the same way we blot out our awareness of 90% of the external stimuli -- There is just too much of it.
We have to choose what to 'deal with' and our capacity for that and awareness of it can change over time.
I also think this goes along with the author's concept of you're not trying since you can kind of snap into awareness and then just do those things sometimes.
seedboot
Definitely resonating with some of this right now, continuing on a journey of discovery of my self and my past. Thank you for sharing
ssgodderidge
> It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it.
Brilliant.
noodletheworld
Hm.
Its an easy trap to fall into to say that people are in hard situations because They Arent Trying Hard Enough.
Your manager might think so.
Your company probably thinks youre not trying hard enough.
…but, there is a also reality, which is overloading people with impossible expectations and then watching them fail isnt helpful.
Its not a learning experience.
Its just mean, and selfish… even when those expectations are, perhaps, self imposed.
If youre in one of these situations, you should ask for help.
If you see someone in them, you should offer to help.
Its well documented that gifted children struggle as adults because they struggle under the weigh of expectations.
The soltuion to this is extremely rarey self reflection about not trying hard enough.
Geez. Talk about setting people up for failure.
The OP literally succeeded by asking for help, yet somehow, walked away with no appreciation of it.
jnovek
This was sort of my takeaway too. The OP got help from someone else and thought to herself “if only I’d tried harder I could’ve done this on my own”. That doesn’t seem like a healthy takeaway.
itsdavesanders
I didn’t take it that way at all. I took it as “I was blinded from the actual solution because my vision was artificially narrow due to my past experiences with this person.” They didn’t ask for help, their partner intervened for them with a completely different and more direct approach.
I have a kid going thru this right now. It’s very disheartening and frustrating to see, because even with coaching and help, they don’t see the help and suggestions as solutions because they simply can’t see it. And as a parent you don’t want to have to intervene, you want them to learn how to dig their way out of it. But it’s tough to get them to dig when they don’t believe in shovels.
h33t-l4x0r
> People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic.
Speaking of being agentic, you could probably just ask ChatGPT what to do next time you're not sure.
Also, people are made up of particles that behave deterministically. Agency is an illusion.
yetihehe
> Also, people are made up of particles that behave deterministically. Agency is an illusion.
I like to slap people talking this to my face. Why? I was predetermined to slap them, the universe was set up that way. But I had only one occasion to really do this. The guy was thinking about this for two days. And when I say about this every proponent of "Agency is an illusion" then has some cop-out about responsibility, because in truth they use "no agency" as an excuse to explain their bad behavior.
aloha2436
> particles that behave deterministically
I'm not a physicist I'll admit, but this seems like a controversial statement.
h33t-l4x0r
Not unless you're talking about quantum indeterminacy, do you think that's where OP's agency comes from?
Or what about the Indian stalker's agency, should they "try harder" to reverse the genetics, pre-natal nutrition, toxin exposure, and gut biome that led them down the path of mental illness?
This is an idea that philosophers have played with in countless varieties, perhaps the one closest to the author's wording is Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of bad faith. Faced with anxiety, guilt or overwhelming weight of responsibility, it's often easier to subconsciously sidestep the problem and pretend you don't have a choice, even if you do. This is not even a conscious decision, it's hard to be aware of our own quirks and biases.