Truth Reveals Itself in Widening Circles
An Exploration of Agency
You walk down the stairs. Grab the keys.
"Honey, will you drive?"
"Sure," he says.
One foot in the car, then the other.
Your seatbelt clicks into place.
The car slowly eases backward.
So, who's driving?
At first glance, the answer seems deceptively simple.
He's behind the wheel, hands at ten and two, guiding you through the labyrinth of LA morning traffic. Steam rises from travel mugs—coffee and green tea hissing in the morning air.
But as we peel back the layers of this mundane moment, a deeper question presents itself: Who – or what – is truly at the helm?
Consider the cascade of events that led to this moment.
He's driving because she asked. But within that simple exchange lies an entire cosmos of inner motions. Perhaps he secretly wanted to drive all along, waiting in that liminal space of unspoken hope. Or maybe he floats in perfect indifference, uncommitted to any outcome. More likely, he's bone-tired, accepting the wheel with a whisper of resentment, choosing peace over authenticity in the delicate dance of their relationship – knowing how she gets when she has to drive but doesn't want to, knowing the weight of that unspoken tension.
They pull out of the driveway, past the longstanding oak trees that are silent witnesses to countless similar mornings. The engine's vibration pulses through the steering wheel, a steady heartbeat beneath his palms. Shadow and light play piano across the dashboard as they pass under highway overpasses, nature's rhythm of darkness and illumination preserved in concrete and steel.
But who charted this course?
The roads themselves tell a story of decisions made generations ago by urban planners whose names we'll never know. Their choices, etched in concrete and asphalt, guide our journey as surely as any hand on the steering wheel. Like river networks carved by time and gravity, our highways follow paths of least resistance, flowing around mountains and through valleys. We follow these artificial watersheds, our freedom of movement bounded by decisions made in rooms we never entered.
Most humans navigate life through the lens of ego, that persistent illusion of separate selfhood. We grip the wheel with white knuckles, convinced we're in control.
If only they... why can't I just... when will it finally...
Zoom out: beyond the car, beyond the city grid, beyond the planet's curvature.
Zoom in: to the microscopic dance of neurons firing, to the quantum flutter of decision-making.
What do you see, what do we see from here?
Inhale... And exhale.
Inhale... And exhale.
What is truly yours?
The ancestral voices persist like whispers in the wind, patterns echoing through us like waves in an underground cave, reverberating until we grow still enough to hear their origin story.
The father's voice saying, "Be careful, stay on the path."
The mother's cautioning, "I know want what's best for you – do it my way."
These become intergenerational patterns that drive us from the inside, shaping our choices like water shapes stone – gradually, persistently, until new forms emerge.
Truth reveals itself in widening circles.
Just as our bodies are not separate from the air we breathe or the food we eat, our actions ripple through a vast web of interconnection. We did not build our own lungs or design our voice boxes. We inherited them, just as we inherited the roads we travel and the patterns we perpetuate.
This recognition can arrive like Inanna's descent into the underworld – that ancient goddess who shed her royal garments layer by layer, discovering that true sovereignty comes not from controlling the journey but from recognizing our inseparability from the realm we move through.
Sometimes, we must strip away our illusions to see who – or what – is really driving.
Our individual struggles with control mirror our species' broader predicament. Just as we grip the steering wheel with false certainty, humanity clings to narratives of dominion over nature, over technology, over our destiny. Yet beneath our manufactured landscapes, ancient wisdom whispers of different possibilities.
Indigenous peoples have long understood what modern complexity science is rediscovering: the power of emergent order.
Just as traffic patterns reveal the intricate dance of countless individual decisions creating coherent flow, human societies can self-organize in harmony with natural systems. We see it in the way Hawaiian ahupua'a systems followed watershed boundaries, in how Aboriginal Australian songlines mapped ecological relationships through story.
The boundaries we draw between self and other, between driver and driven, begin to blur. In the age where our monetary, energetic, economic, environmental, and technological systems converge, where digital roads channel our attention as surely as concrete channels our cars, the question of who's driving becomes ever more crucial.
Are we conscious pilots of our collective journey or passengers carried along by forces we've set in motion but no longer control?
Perhaps the greatest wisdom lies not in asserting control but in recognizing the dance of agency and surrender. Like a skilled sailor reading the winds, we learn to work with the currents that carry us, understanding that we are both the wave and the ocean, the driver and the driven. We still hold the wheel, but we don’t grip. We sense the subtle influence of ancestors, relationships, culture, and cosmos braided into every turn.
What emerges when we loosen our grip on the wheel? When communities design transportation systems that mirror natural flows? When we recognize that every journey is both utterly personal and completely universal?
The car comes to rest.
Engine quiet now.
In the stillness between moments, we glimpse it: each turn of the wheel echoing through time, through space, like a breath drawn from the vast atmosphere, held briefly as our own, then returned to the whole.
What do you truly desire?
What do we truly need?
A mind at peace.
A heart open enough to love and be loved.
A spirit free to express its wild truth.
You gently exhale—knowing life is short, but desire stretches endlessly.
Who's driving?
We ask tirelessly again.
The answer unfolds like a road into the distance: all of us, and none of us, at once. Each choice a thread in the grand tapestry of emergence, each journey a dance of individual will and collective becoming.
In this recognition lies the seed of regenerative progress: Not in tighter control, but in deeper participation. Not in isolation, but in relationship. Not in dominion, but in the sacred art of steering together toward harmony with the larger currents that carry us all.
With gratitude,
Rachel
Emergence with Rachel Weissman is weekly essays on human potential for regenerative progress — interlacing art & design, ecology, futurism, human potential, mystical wisdom, and technology.
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