The structure I suggested for the requests of Shemoneh Esrei places the berakhah of Hashiveinu as the second of a set of requests about granting each person their spiritual potential. And in that system, the second of each set is about restoration. The fact that the first word of the berakhah is “Hashiveinu – Return Us” buttresses that model. Similarly, in the third set, the second berakhah opens “Hashiva shofeteinu – Return our judges.”

The current berakhah asks Hashem to (tr. Metsuda):

Are we are asking Hashem to do our teshuvah for us? That defeats too many givens about free will! As Rabbi Chanina is quoted a few times in Shas as saying, “הַכֹּל בִּידֵי שָׁמַיִם, חוּץ מִיִּרְאַת שָׁמַיִם — everything is in the control of heaven except for fear/awe of heaven“. So how can we be asking for it here?

One could argue that the act of turning to Hashem to ask for it is itself a form of teshuvah, but we are saying it in the plural. And many of the non-repentant are not going to be joining us in prayer.

More so, there is a suggested insertion for this berakhah if one wants to explicitly pray for someone else’s teshuvah, originating with the Alshich in the name of the Ari:

יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה’ אֱלֹקי וֵאלֹקי אֲבוֹתַי
שֶׁתַּחְתּוֹר חֲתִירָה מִתַּחַת כִּסֵּא כְבוֹדֶךָ,
וּתְקַבֵּל בִּתְשׁוּבָה אֶת <פלוני>
כִּי יְמִינְךָ פְּשׁוּטָה לְקַבֵּל שָׁבִים

My it be the Will before You, Hashem my G-d and the G-d of my ancestors,
that You excavate an opening under Your Throne of glory
and accept <name> in teshuvah
for your “Right Hand” [i.e. Divine Chessed] is stretched out to accept the repentant.

But if we take the idea of asking Hashem to do teshuvah for us off the table, what is this berakhah asking for?

When a mouse in a psychologist runs a maze, it chooses at each intersection which route to take. But there are only choices at the intersections.

Similarly, free will is limited by the choices life poses for us. If an opportunity never comes up, you cannot choose it.

I think there is a hint in the Ari’s prayer, in an idiom taken from the Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin 10:2), to “excavate an opening under the Throne of glory”. Making reaching higher accessible. Giving someone a glimpse of the Throne, of something more Divine than their current attitude.

So in essence, I take the berakhah as asking that we all have the inspiring moments, to keep on providing the intersections in our lives that could lead to teshuvah. Even if it is our choice to make use of the opportunity.