“They had factors in their lives that helped to influence their AGENCY.” – NYU sociologist Anindya Kundu
Kundu is talking about students, but I suspect the same factors enhance people’s GRIT in all stages and walks of life.
He argues that the AGENCY and PURPOSE that are the launch pad for GRIT and GROWTH are social and environmental – NOT JUST psychological. GRIT is more likely to emerge when people have access to an environment and social support that helps them discover and cultivate their AGENCY (and a sense of PURPOSE):
‘So some people might hear these stories and say, “Yes, those two definitely have grit. They basically pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.” But that’s an incomplete picture, because what’s more important is that they had factors in their lives that helped to influence their agency, or their specific capacity to actually overcome the obstacles that they were facing and navigate the system given their circumstances.’
According to Kundu, seemingly small factors that many of us take for granted have an outsized impact on our ability to cultivate the AGENCY that is the launchpad for finding and pursuing something that gives us a compelling sense of PURPOSE:
“What these stories primarily indicate is that teaching is social and benefits from social scaffolding. There were factors pushing these two in one direction, but through tailored mentorship and opportunities, they were able to reflect on their circumstances and resist negative influences. They also learned simple skills like developing a network, or asking for help — things many of us in this room can forget that we have needed from time to time, or can take for granted.”
Grit emerges from AGENCY; AGENCY is more likely to emerge when certain enabling factors are in place.
It is our collective responsibility to do at least a little bit to help establish the factors that enable more and more of our peers to discover and cultivate the agency that we will later valorize as grit:
“When we think of people like this, we should only think of them as exceptional, but not as exceptions. Thinking of them as exceptions absolves us of the collective responsibility to help students in similar situations.”
From interview on TED Radio Hour:
“If we think of society as an organism, it’s like a living thing with different parts and cells, what we’re dealing with right now is almost like an autoimmune condition where we don’t really see our commonality in someone else.
And so what that has us do is retreat inward, but that’s also furthering the problem. And so to kind of combat that social discohesion, I think we really need to put forward these institutions, places where everybody can go and everyone can belong and everybody can kind of remember that we’re all in this together.”
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Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)
In the space between you and me awaits all that will ever be.
人と人の間に全てのもと
Here’s a link to Anindya Kundu’s TED talk:
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