Maya closed her laptop with more force than necessary. She'd been reading the Mirror Room collection for her book club, and every page had made her more agitated.
"This is exactly the kind of individualistic bullshit that's destroying society," she muttered to herself, pacing around her small Brooklyn apartment. The walls were covered with protest posters—Black Lives Matter, Climate Justice, Eat the Rich. Her bookshelf groaned under the weight of Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Angela Davis.
She opened her laptop again and began typing furiously in her group chat:
Maya: Just finished the Mirror Room stories. We need to talk about how problematic this collection is.
Alex: Oh no, what's wrong with it?
Maya: Where do I even start? It's pure neoliberal ideology wrapped in philosophical language. These characters are basically walking around with the privilege to have existential crises while real people are struggling with actual systemic oppression.
She paused, fingers hovering over the keys, then continued:
Maya: The "Consistent Man" story is basically bootstraps mythology. Some white guy decides to be disciplined and magically his life works out. No mention of how his race, class, or education made that possible. And don't get me started on the Ayn Rand character literally telling people their problems are their own fault.
Jordan: But isn't there something to be said about personal responsibility?
Maya: Personal responsibility is a myth used to justify inequality. People's choices are constrained by structures they didn't create and can't control individually.
She hit send, feeling righteous. But something nagged at her. She found herself opening the collection again, scrolling back to Sarah's story.
"I am who I choose to be!" Sarah had shouted at her reflections.
Maya frowned. There was something about that moment that made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't quite articulate. She kept reading, getting increasingly agitated at Alicia's speech about choosing life and taking responsibility for one's existence.
"You've already made the fundamental choice—you chose to live when you got up this morning," she read aloud, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "What about people who can't choose to get up because they're working three jobs? What about people whose choices are constrained by—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
A memory surfaced: herself at nineteen, working at Starbucks while going to community college, living in a studio apartment with two roommates. Her mother had called, drunk again, demanding money. Her manager was sexually harassing her. She was behind on student loans.
She remembered standing in the bathroom of the coffee shop, staring at herself in the mirror, thinking: I could just give up. I could drop out, move back home, accept that this is my life.
But she hadn't. She had chosen—despite everything—to keep going. To transfer to a four-year school. To report the manager. To set boundaries with her mother.
None of those external circumstances had changed when she made those decisions. The system was still rigged. Her family was still dysfunctional. She was still poor. But she had chosen anyway.
"Oh fuck," she whispered.
She opened her laptop again, this time to reread the Kierkegaard section:
"The choice to exist—to truly exist as a self rather than merely persist as a biological organism—is not a choice made once and then executed systematically. It is the choice that must be made again and again, in fear and trembling, without the comfort of rational certainty."
Maya felt something shift in her chest—a kind of vertigo. She thought about her activism, her political consciousness, her identity as someone who fought against systems of oppression. All of that was real and important, but...
When had she stopped thinking of herself as someone who chooses?
When had she started thinking of herself primarily as someone to whom things are done?
She scrolled through her social media feed—post after post about how various systems were crushing people, how individual action was meaningless, how only collective solutions mattered. She realized she'd been surrounded for years by messages that essentially said: You are not the author of your life. You are a victim of forces beyond your control.
But even as she'd been posting those messages, she'd been making choices. She'd chosen to go to graduate school. She'd chosen her apartment, her job, her relationship, her daily habits. She'd chosen to become politically active.
None of those choices had happened in a vacuum—they were all constrained and shaped by her circumstances. But they were still her choices.
"I've been lying to myself," she said out loud.
She thought about her friends in the activist community. How many of them talked about systemic change while their personal lives were chaos? How many railed against capitalism while making no effort to develop skills or build careers? How many demanded that society change while refusing to change themselves?
She grabbed her phone and called her best friend Emma, another activist.
"Em, can I ask you something? Do you think there's a difference between acknowledging that systems constrain us and using that as an excuse not to take responsibility for our own lives?"
There was a pause. "What do you mean?"
"I mean... like, yes, capitalism is fucked and creates terrible constraints on working people. But within those constraints, don't we still have to decide what to do with our lives? Don't we still have to choose?"
"Maya, this sounds dangerously close to victim-blaming—"
"No, hear me out. I'm not saying people are to blame for their circumstances. I'm saying that even within constrained circumstances, we're still the ones who have to decide how to respond. And maybe by constantly focusing on how constrained we are, we're... I don't know... giving up our power?"
Maya realized she was pacing again, but this time with a different energy.
"Think about it, Em. Every morning you wake up and decide what to do with that day. You choose what to eat, what to read, how to spend your time, how to treat people. Those choices might be constrained by your budget or your schedule or your family situation, but they're still choices. And the quality of your life depends partly on those choices, doesn't it?"
Emma was quiet for a long time. "I... I don't know how to answer that without feeling like I'm betraying everything I believe about social justice."
"What if social justice and personal responsibility aren't opposites? What if fighting for systemic change and taking responsibility for your own life are both necessary?"
After they hung up, Maya sat with her laptop open, staring at the Mirror Room collection. She realized that her political consciousness—her awareness of systemic oppression—had become a kind of prison. It had made her so focused on what she couldn't control that she'd stopped paying attention to what she could.
She opened a new document and began writing:
Today I realized I've been using my politics to avoid the terror and responsibility of my own freedom. Yes, I face constraints. Yes, systems shape my choices. But I'm still the one who has to choose what to do with my consciousness, with my days, with my life.
I've been so busy waiting for the system to change that I forgot I could change myself within the system.
I've been so focused on collective problems that I forgot individual solutions—while insufficient—are still necessary.
I've been so committed to being a victim of circumstances that I forgot I could be an agent within those circumstances.
She paused, thinking about Daniel's consistency, Sarah's freedom from fixed identity, Alicia's challenge to take responsibility for one's existence.
Maybe the most radical thing I can do is refuse to abdicate my mind and agency, even to a political cause I believe in. Maybe the revolution starts with each person choosing to become fully responsible for their own existence, regardless of circumstances.
She closed the laptop and looked around her apartment—at the protest posters, the radical books, the symbols of her political identity. They were still meaningful to her. But now they felt like tools for action rather than excuses for inaction.
Tomorrow she would wake up and have to choose what to do with the day. The system would still be unjust. Her circumstances would still be constrained. But the choice would still be hers.
For the first time in years, that felt like freedom rather than burden.
Sometimes the most progressive position is the belief that individuals can progress.