Introduction The question of free will has been central to philosophy for thousands of years, and yet, the clash between free will and determinism has not been resolved to this day. The idea of free will permeates many cultures and underpins their very foundations. Concurrently, socioeconomic, political, and psychological realities often challenge the illusion of human omnipotence and bring forth the often defining role of circumstances. In social sciences, the debate is known as agency vs. stratification where agency denotes the human capacity to make decisions unimpeded, while structure refers to patterned arrangements that contain and limit the said agency. Their complicated relationship is reflected in Cottom’s quote: “We are people with free will, circumscribed to different degrees by histories that shape who we are allowed to become.” This paper reflects on the tension between agency and stratification. The Tension Between Agency and Stratification The ideas of agency, stratification, and their interactions are at the very heart of the sociological theory. In essence, they echo the fundamental questions concerning the origins of the social world and the determinants of human behavior. On the one hand, a group of thinkers and sociologists argue in favor of stratification’s predominant role. For instance, Marxism reasoned that any human society is defined by a class struggle in which the dominant class oppresses and exploits the proletariat. In this case, the whole is greater than its part, and a person’s life and its quality are largely contingent on their belongingness to a certain class. Today, there is scientific evidence substantiating this claim: for example, it has been established that poverty implies long-term stress, which, in turn, suppresses cognitive function (Mani et al., 2013). At the same time, history knows many examples of when people were able to overcome their circumstances and rise above their humble beginning. Hence, there is an opposing school of thought that stresses the human ability to construct and reconstruct their realities. From this perspective, an individual can be more influential than the system, removing the primacy of stratification. C. Wright Mill’s Theory of the Sociological Imagination A concept that is useful for understanding the tension between agency and stratification is Wright Mill’s sociological imagination. He wrote that “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both,” striking a balance between agency and stratification without assigning the leading role to either of them (Wright Mill, 2000). In essence, Wright Mill argued that one can replace the lenses through which they see the world and take a look at their reality from a new angle. What changing one’s perspective may do is debunk the illusion that every person’s struggle is unique and they are pursuing a solitary path. Many phenomena, such as marriage, education, employment, and others, deal with more than one individual at once. For instance, choosing a life partner may seem like an individual task, but society dictates a relationship timeline and rites of marriage that have been established long before the said individual was even born. It might as well be that every individual action has been taken by others as well and, moreover, a result of interlocking influences and circumstances. When de