The Serpentine Path: Finding Meaning in the Chaos of Unraveling and Rebuilding

Today’s exploration touches upon the nature of serendipity, the construction of meaning in adversity, the stories we tell ourselves, and the unexpected ways AI has become both a subject of reflection and a tool in this very process of articulation.

It has been a couple of weeks since my last contribution to Planksip.

This silence was born of the sheer intensity of life’s recent undulations. The stability from my business was unceremoniously pulled from beneath my feet about two months ago. This period has been a crucible, forcing a confrontation with vulnerability, a re-evaluation of purpose, and an urgent search for new narratives. 

What follows is a distillation of these raw experiences into something of value, a reflection on navigating profound disruption, inspired by the very events that kept me from writing. 

I. The Unfolding Present: A Catalyst for Reflection

The past two months have been a period of intense recalibration. The loss of my social media presence, a cornerstone for both personal connection and business visibility, was a significant blow, particularly as it compounded pre-existing challenges. This digital de-isolation, a theme I’ve explored previously for Planksip, brought with it a profound fear for the survival of my business, a venture already strained by numerous external factors.

A conversation with Daniel from Planksip a few months prior had sparked the idea of writing a book on parenting, and even forming a parents' support group. However, this path felt obstructed by my own limited network of parents, especially as a stepparent navigating new familial dynamics in the isolation of rural Costa Rica, further compounded by the lack of social media to bridge those distances. Amidst this, other opportunities and a friend in the corporate world brought a question to my mind: "What would be my dream job? If I could be paid to do something in the corporate world, what would it be?" This question steered my thoughts towards my deep-seated passion for people development, for fostering personal and professional growth.

This introspection occurs against the backdrop of the restaurant—my nine-year endeavor—seeing its client base and revenue plummet to less than 20% of its former glory. Yet, this very crisis serves as a potent reminder: the restaurant itself was an accidental genesis, born from a previous moment of profound challenge.

II. Connecting the Dots Backwards: Serendipity, Skill, and Steve Jobs

The current upheaval mirrors, in some ways, the circumstances that led to the restaurant's creation nearly a decade ago. This recurring pattern of crisis breeding unforeseen opportunity offers a lens through which to view the often circuitous nature of a life path.

A. The Accidental Restaurateur: From No Internet to #1 on TripAdvisor

Ten years ago, the vision was a coaching retreat center for entrepreneurs in Costa Rica. I had built a thriving online coaching business, commanding fees such as $25,000 for two months of intensive coaching. This success enabled the purchase of land, predicated on the promise of fast internet – a promise that evaporated upon discovery, leaving me with no internet at all. As an entrepreneur, resourcefulness is paramount. I reasoned that in a country as developed in many ways as Costa Rica, a solution for internet connectivity must exist, even if bureaucracy might delay it for a few months. 

To remain occupied during this anticipated interim, and to indulge a long-held fantasy of being involved in a restaurant, I decided to "pretend" to run one. I had always enjoyed hosting dinners and playfully imagined being the owner of a restaurant and guiding a chef. So, I created a TripAdvisor page, a Facebook page, and an Instagram account. What began as a temporary, almost whimsical experiment, a "fun little game" I envisioned as a case study for coaching clients on rapid business creation, quickly took on a life of its own. Within a remarkably short period, this "pretend" restaurant became #1 on TripAdvisor for Tamarindo, then for the entire province of Guanacaste.

The original plan was that within two to three months, the internet issue would be resolved, and I would return to my high-value coaching clients. The restaurant would be a charming anecdote. However, the restaurant broke even in its first month and was generating a decent income within three. This unexpected trajectory demanded a re-evaluation. My background in engineering, coupled with years of coaching entrepreneurs on business efficiency, had inadvertently equipped me to build a highly efficient restaurant model. I had systematically addressed the three primary failure points for restaurants: high location costs (I operated from my neighbor’s casita, initially), high staffing needs (I was a one-person operation), and food waste (my reservation-only model with a surprise menu minimized this). This accidental venture, born of necessity and a dash of fantasy, became a demanding and successful reality, eclipsing the coaching retreat dream as it ended up taking 5 years to get a decent enough internet to do calls reliably.

B. The Coaching Thread: From High-Ticket Clients to a Documentary

Before the internet vanished and the restaurant materialized, my coaching career was flourishing. I worked with entrepreneurs, business owners, investors, and public speakers. One client, through our 20-minute weekly coaching sessions (which I often extended to 30 minutes), successfully raised $750,000 for a documentary he wished to produce. As a testament to the impact of the coaching, he included me in the film, "Leap," alongside world-renowned coaches. "Leap (2018)," directed by Kasia and Patryk Wezowski, featured an elite team of coaches including Marshall Goldsmith, Jack Canfield, and Mark Thompson. Mark Thompson is noted as a coach to figures like Steve Jobs and Sir Richard Branson. This documentary appearance was a significant marker of my standing in the coaching world at that time, but I had to put all my coaching work on pause due to the lack of internet.

C. Steve Jobs' Wisdom: The Retrospective Coherence of a "Dispersed" Life

This journey of unexpected turns and "accidental" successes resonates deeply with Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address, particularly his reflection on "connecting the dots". Jobs recounted how experiences like dropping into a calligraphy class, seemingly irrelevant at the time, became crucial years later in designing the typography for the first Macintosh computer. He emphasized that "you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future".

This sentiment mirrors my own experience. I've often been perceived as "dispersed," involved in a multitude of seemingly disconnected pursuits: theatre acting, Boy Scouts, engineering studies, business consulting, web design, art photography, drawing & painting, judo and extensive writing amongst the many other rabbit holes I fell into. Throughout my life, I was judged for having too broad interests and not being focused enough on doing and being ONE thing.

The fine dining restaurant became the unexpected crucible where all these disparate threads converged. My artistic inclinations found expression in the plating of food; my love for mathematics in accounting and client statistics; my theatrical training in turning dinner into a "Vegas show" or "better than Broadway," as clients have described it. My engineering background informed the obsessive efficiency of the business operations. The years spent coaching and consulting on business strategy were directly applied to marketing, promotion, and creating a beautiful and highly effective online reservation system, which clients regularly praise as the best they’d ever encountered. My writing and poetry fed into crafting the website, which many guests said created an exact expectation of me, making the online presence a "perfect reflection" of who I am.

This retrospective coherence shows how a seemingly scattered collection of skills and experiences suddenly finds a unified field of application. This success reflects the pattern behind most of my achievements which challenges the conventional notion of a linear, pre-planned career or life path. My experience is a testament that the value of diverse experiences often reveals itself only in hindsight, and that what might appear as dispersion can, in fact, be the cultivation of a uniquely potent toolkit. The restaurant's success was not despite this varied background, but because of it. Each skill, honed in a different context, became a critical component in addressing the multifaceted challenges of creating a unique and thriving fine-dining experience from scratch, in the middle of nowhere.

III. The Alchemy of Adversity: Crafting Meaning from Struggle

The current period is one of profound adversity, yet it is through the lens of past transformations that I attempt to navigate it, seeking not just solutions, but meaning.

A. The Weight of Unmet Promises and External Shocks

The recent collapse of the restaurant business, triggered by the sudden loss of social media visibility and other cascading factors, has been devastating. Business plummeted to under 20% of its previous year's performance, a stark downturn for a venture with a nine-year upward trajectory. This financial shock has had immediate and painful repercussions for my new family. My fiancée and her two daughters moved in with me, with shared dreams and expectations for a certain lifestyle, educational opportunities for the girls, and the security that would allow my fiancée to re-engage her own entrepreneurial pursuits. The inability to fulfill these promises has brought a heavy burden of guilt and shame.

Compounding the financial stress has been the logistical nightmare of our remote jungle location without a reliable income. The lack of a car meant we were walking four hours a day to take the younger daughter to and from her village school – an hour each way, twice a day. While my fiancée and I have reflected on this period as an "extraordinary and magical adventure" in some respects, a unique story of resilience and bonding, it simultaneously made running a business, working, or solving financial problems utterly impossible. It's a stark reminder of how external circumstances can impose severe limitations, even as one grapples with feelings of personal responsibility. 

B. Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning: The Will to Meaning in the Midst of Suffering

In moments like these, the wisdom of thinkers like Viktor Frankl becomes particularly resonant. Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, developed logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy centered on the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful. He famously asserted that "life can have meaning even in the most miserable of circumstances" and that suffering itself can be turned into achievement and accomplishment. One of his core tenets is that "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way".

Applying this to the current situation, the immense struggles—financial, emotional, familial—can be viewed as a long series of unfortunate events, or as a profound opportunity to discover or actively create new meaning. It is a call to exercise that ultimate freedom: to choose my attitude, to define the narrative of this experience, even when the external facts are grim. The "existential vacuum," as Frankl termed the state of meaninglessness that can lead to despair, is a palpable threat in such times, and logotherapy offers a path to address it directly by uncovering purpose.

C. Existentialist Currents: Freedom, Responsibility, and the Absurd

Frankl's ideas intersect with broader existentialist philosophy, which emphasizes individual freedom, personal responsibility for creating meaning, and the necessity of making choices in an uncertain, often absurd world. Existentialism posits that "existence precedes essence"; that is, we are not born with a fixed purpose but define ourselves through our choices and actions. The current unraveling of my established identity as a successful restaurateur and provider has thrown me into a stark confrontation with this existential freedom. The exploration of "all sorts of different directions"—the parenting book, the corporate job search, many other work and business ideas that emerged—is a direct engagement with this task of redefining my essence, of creating new meaning after the old structures have crumbled.

The dramatic swings in my life—from high-flying coach to accidental fine dining chef, from #1 on TripAdvisor to facing illegality, from peak success before COVID to near-total collapse now—can be seen as an illustration of the "absurdity" that existentialist thinkers like Camus described. Life offers no guarantees of stability or linear progression; meaning is not a pre-packaged commodity but something that must be continually constructed and reconstructed. This process is often uncomfortable, fraught with anxiety, but it is also the hallmark of an authentic existence.

The experience of being an illegal immigrant in Costa Rica for several years, while deeply stressful, offers a case study in this meaning-making process. I was a European citizen, illegal in a "third-world" country—an ironic reversal of typical migration patterns that wasn't lost on the locals. The constant anxiety of potential discovery by immigration authorities was immense. However, I framed this period through a "cathartic narrative," consciously choosing to see it as a way to relive and understand a part of my grandparents' experiences as Polish Jews arriving illegally in Belgium. My grandfather, fleeing the Nazis, had journeyed through Russia and Uzbekistan, eventually arriving in Belgium as an undocumented immigrant, facing the struggles of nationalization. This narrative reframing didn't remove the stress, but it imbued the experience with a layer of personal, historical, and even spiritual significance. It transformed raw suffering into a story with depth and purpose. This underscores a fundamental truth: the narratives we create around our experiences are not mere interpretations; they actively shape how we live through those experiences. As I’ve learned repeatedly, the stories we tell ourselves become the reality we inhabit.

IV. The Story We Tell Ourselves: Narrative Identity as a Lifeline

The power of narrative, so vividly experienced during those years of illegality, remains a central theme in my current journey of navigating uncertainty.

A. The Power of Narrative: From Illegality to Published Author

The conscious construction of that "cathartic narrative" about my grandparents was a lifeline. It taught me that our interpretation of facts, the stories we weave around them, fundamentally shapes our lived reality. This principle extends to other areas, such as my book, "Transgression: My Very Public Journey To Become a (Wo)Man." 

Much of the book comprises social media posts from my Facebook and Instagram accounts, chronicling my transition day by day. At the time of publication, I questioned its intrinsic value, wondering if people would buy a book containing content largely available for free online. However, a few days ago, it struck me with sudden force: my entire social media presence has been wiped out. All those posts, those real-time records of my journey, are gone. Suddenly, the book has transformed in my mind. It is no longer just a collection of posts but a precious, tangible archive of those experiences, a unique record of what I published and how I felt that has been banned like often happens with meaningful and powerful material. In this new light, being banned is turning into a badge of honor, aligning me with some of the most impactful writers. Due to the transphobic attacks and Meta’s failure to offer any kind of help, the social media accounts are gone and none of this content is now available for free. This illustrates how the meaning and value of our narratives can shift dramatically with changing circumstances, often in ways we don't foresee.

B. McAdams' Narrative Identity Theory: Structuring the Self's Story

This personal understanding of narrative power finds strong resonance in psychological theories, particularly Dan McAdams' theory of narrative identity. McAdams posits that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self. This "life story" provides a sense of unity, purpose, and meaning, weaving together the reconstructed past, the perceived present, and the imagined future. These narratives are not just chronological accounts but true stories with characters, settings, plots, and themes.

Several key constructs from McAdams' theory illuminate my own unfolding story:

• Redemption Sequences: These are transitions from a negative state to a positive one (A → B), often characterized by sacrifice, recovery, growth, or learning. 

The accidental success of the restaurant after the internet failure is a clear example. The current exploration of moving the restaurant (HiR Fine Dining) to Berlin after the business collapse and family pressures could be the beginning of another such sequence.

• Contamination Sequences: Conversely, these involve a positive state turning irrevocably negative (B → A), where the negativity overwhelms the preceding good. 

The thriving restaurant being decimated by COVID and then the social media loss is a stark contamination sequence. Similarly, the initial joy and hope of forming a new family life have been contaminated by the severe financial strain and the inability to fulfill promises.

• Agency: This refers to the narrator's autonomy and power to affect their own life and circumstances. 

This theme is strongly evident throughout my entrepreneurial endeavors, my resourcefulness in Costa Rica, and the current proactive search for solutions, however challenging.

• Communion: This reflects the motivation to form intimate connections and experience belonging. 

My focus on family, the past desire to create a parents' support group, and the deep, meaningful connections forged with guests at the fine-dining restaurant all speak to this drive for communion.

• Coherence (Temporal, Causal, Thematic): A crucial aspect of narrative identity is the creation of coherence—making sense of events in a chronological, cause-and-effect, and thematically unified way. 

This very article is an attempt to build such coherence from a period of intense flux, to find the threads that connect seemingly disparate events and emotions.

A striking pattern that emerges when viewing my life through this lens is a recurring "redemption script." Time and again, profound crises have, often unexpectedly, led to new ventures or transformative adaptations: the lack of internet for the coaching business birthed the successful restaurant; the challenge of illegality was navigated through resilience and eventually resolved, allowing the business to formalize and grow; the COVID shutdown in Guanacaste prompted an audacious attempt to relocate to San Jose, which led to my transition. Now, the current multifaceted crisis is catalyzing the potential move to Berlin. 

This repeated cycle of confronting adversity and forging a new path from the wreckage is more than just a series of disconnected events; it has become an internalized narrative of resilience and adaptive capacity. Recognizing this pattern is not just an intellectual exercise; it can be a potent source of hope and agency, a reminder that "I've navigated massive, unexpected shifts before and created something new; I can do it again."

C. The Uncomfortable Act of Real-Time Storytelling

There is a unique value, I believe, in sharing these experiences—the vulnerabilities, insecurities, and anxieties—as they are happening. So much of what we read, especially stories of success or overcoming adversity, is invariably polished by retrospect. The raw uncertainty of the outcome cannot be recreated. The experience is profoundly different before the story has its happy ending. When one is in the thick of the struggle, in the eye of the tornado, the outcome is unknown. Hope, faith, and belief are not comfortable certainties but hard-won, daily affirmations. Sharing this discomfort, this "unglamorous" reality of change, is an attempt to offer a more genuine record, one that might resonate with others who find themselves in similar liminal spaces. It is in these uncomfortable moments that the real work of forging a narrative, and thereby an identity, takes place.

V. Navigating Friction: The Dance of Persistence and Pivoting

The journey through a crisis is rarely a straight line. It's often a messy process of trial, error, and course correction, marked by what I’ve come to call "friction."

A. Interpreting Life's Resistance: Is Friction a Stop Sign or a Test?

One of the most challenging aspects of navigating difficult times is interpreting resistance. When every effort seems to meet a roadblock, is it a sign to persevere, to push harder? Or is it an indication that one is heading in the wrong direction, that a pivot is required? This has been a central question in recent months. After the initial shock of the business downturn, I pursued multiple avenues: exploring the parenting book and support group idea with Planksip, meticulously crafting a proposal for a Head of Learning and Development role in the corporate world (complete with a year-long plan), attempting to leverage my remaining social media presence on LinkedIn, X, and TikTok, and seeking bank loans in Costa Rica amongst many other opportunities explored. Each of these paths, pursued with diligence, resulted in friction and friction and friction. No interviews for the job, automated rejection emails, no traction from social media, and a banking system in Costa Rica that, despite my valuable property, deemed my reduced business income too risky for a loan. This relentless opposition forces a difficult discernment: is this the universe testing my resolve, or not so gently nudging me elsewhere?

B. The Sprawl of Exploration vs. The Focus of Convergence

Several friends observed that I was "spread thin," trying too many things simultaneously. They were right. Yet, I also believe that in times of profound transformation—when facing major losses, depressions, or the need to recover from significant hurts—a period of broad exploration is often essential. These are not moments to be ignored or treated as minor bumps. They are significant junctures and potential catalysts for substantial growth and transformation. If we don't frame these disruptions as opportunities for change, they risk becoming mere burdens. Our narrative about these pivotal moments is crucial. It is the story of how we use these challenges to transform ourselves that imbues them with excitement and inspiration.

C. The "Unreasonable Solution": Berlin as an Emergent Path

It was amidst this sprawling, often frustrating, search that the idea of Berlin emerged. It came not from a strategic plan, but from an offhand comment by a former restaurant client who, upon hearing of my predicament, asked if we'd considered Berlin, mentioning its vibrant rooftop scene. Initially, Berlin was "a million years away" in my mind as a potential place to live or work. I would never have independently chosen Germany. Yet, as I began to research the practicalities of opening a fine dining restaurant there and as we discussed it as a family, something shifted.

For my fiancée, a Costa Rican, and her daughters (aged 8 and 13), Berlin started to present a surprising array of opportunities: educational, professional, and cultural. What might have felt unappealing as a solo move took on a completely different complexion when viewed through the lens of a family of four with diverse needs and interests. Berlin became the "Maverick," the "outlier" solution. It was an unreasonable answer to an unreasonable set of problems, emerging serendipitously after many "reasonable" avenues had proven to be dead ends. This process, of widespread tinkering and pivoting, even when it feels like going in circles or banging one's head against a wall, is often a necessary precursor for such unexpected, innovative solutions to surface. The friction encountered along more conventional paths may, in fact, exhaust standard approaches, making the mind more receptive to the unconventional.

D. The Narrative of Transformation: Why Stories Need to End Differently

This potential move to Berlin, this new direction, offers the promise of a story that ends differently from where it began. Most compelling narratives, whether in film or in life, involve transformation. If a story concludes with the protagonist in the exact same situation and state as they started, a sense of futility or stasis often prevails. Of course, there are exceptions. Some films utilize circular narratives, ending where they began, to powerful effect. In these cases, the "point" may not be external change but an internal realization, the revelation of a complex pattern, or the tragic nature of being trapped. This adds a layer of nuance: even if external circumstances revert, the internal landscape—the character's understanding, or ours—can be irrevocably changed. For our family, the Berlin chapter promises a significant departure, a new beginning born from the ashes of the old, fueled by a renewed sense of energy and collective purpose. Our youngest daughter has already started learning German, and we are actively pursuing fundraising and pre-sales campaigns to make this ambitious move a reality, envisioning a restaurant there that could be ten times more successful and achieve the international recognition all my clients felt it deserved in Costa Rica.

VI. Cultivating Inner Fortitude: Building Hope and Belief Amidst Uncertainty

This journey through turmoil is not just about finding external solutions; it's profoundly about cultivating inner resources—faith (in oneself, in the future), hope, and belief. This is where the reflective nature of Planksip, with its focus on philosophy and AI, offers a valuable space to explore models for developing these qualities.

A. The Quest: How to Develop Faith, Hope, and Belief?

In the midst of uncertainty, when familiar structures collapse, the question of how to sustain, or even generate, faith, hope, and belief becomes paramount. This isn't necessarily about religious faith. It's also about a secular, psychological faith in one's own capacity to navigate, to endure, and to create a more positive future. It's about finding internal wellsprings of resilience when external circumstances are bleak.

B. Snyder's Hope Theory: A Cognitive Framework for Optimism

One powerful psychological framework is Charles Snyder's Hope Theory. Snyder conceptualized hope not merely as an emotion, but as a cognitive process involving three key components: clear goals, agency (the willpower and belief in one's ability to achieve those goals), and pathways (the perceived ability to generate workable routes to those goals). 

Hope, in this view, is a learned skill. The Berlin plan, for instance, serves as a new, ambitious "goal." The intensive research, networking with potential investors, and launching fundraising campaigns are the "pathways." The renewed energy and collective enthusiasm within the family contribute to "agency." 

Snyder even developed the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (ADHS) as a tool to measure these components. Barriers are seen not as dead ends, but as challenges that necessitate the creation of new pathways, a process that itself can reactivate agency and positive emotion.

C. Stoic Wisdom: Embracing Virtue and What's Within Our Control

Ancient Stoic philosophy offers timeless wisdom for navigating adversity. At its core, Stoicism teaches the importance of focusing on our internal responses rather than external events, which are often beyond our control. It emphasizes the cultivation of virtue—wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance—as the path to a flourishing life, irrespective of circumstances. Practical Stoic exercises include:

• The Dichotomy of Control: Clearly distinguishing between what is within our power (the way we interpret and respond to our thoughts, judgments, actions) and what is not (external events, other people's actions).
• Premeditatio Malorum (Negative Visualization): Mentally preparing for potential setbacks, not to dwell on negativity, but to reduce their psychological impact should they occur, and to appreciate what we have.
• Practicing Gratitude and Acceptance: Cultivating an appreciation for the present and accepting what cannot be changed, thereby robbing misfortune of its strength. Seneca's insight that "No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself," speaks to the Stoic view of challenges as opportunities for growth.

D. Psychological Strategies for Self-Belief and a Positive Future (Secular Approaches)

Modern psychology offers a wealth of secular strategies that complement these philosophical outlooks:

• Self-Efficacy (Albert Bandura): This refers to the belief in one's own ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task. It can be built through:
• Mastery Experiences: Successfully navigating challenges. Recalling past successes.
• Vicarious Experiences: Observing others succeed through sustained effort.
• Verbal Persuasion: Encouragement and support from others.
• Managing Physiological and Emotional States: Interpreting stress responses in a way that enhances rather than undermines performance.
• Resilience Building (Positive Psychology): Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Positive psychology emphasizes:
• Fostering Supportive Relationships: Strong social connections are crucial buffers.
• Developing Coping Strategies: Learning effective ways to deal with stress.
• Maintaining a Positive Outlook: Actively cultivating optimism.
• Identifying and Leveraging Strengths: Understanding and using one's inherent talents and character strengths (e.g., through tools like the VIA Character Strengths survey) can increase vitality and goal attainment.²³
• Reframing Obstacles as Challenges: Viewing difficulties as opportunities for growth rather than insurmountable barriers.
• Focusing on Progress, Not Perfection: Acknowledging and celebrating small steps forward.
• Mindfulness Practices: These involve paying attention to the present moment—thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations—without judgment. Secular mindfulness, drawing from ancient traditions but adapted for modern contexts, can reduce reactivity, increase self-awareness, and foster a sense of calm and acceptance amidst turmoil. Practices like meditation, mindful walking, or simply bringing focused attention to daily activities can be profoundly grounding.
• Cognitive Restructuring (from CBT principles): This involves identifying, challenging, and changing negative or unhelpful thought patterns that can undermine faith in oneself or the future. The ABCDE model (Adversity, Beliefs, Consequences, Disputation, Energization) from positive psychology is one such tool for deconstructing and reframing negative experiences.

These frameworks—Hope Theory, Stoicism, Self-Efficacy, Resilience principles, Mindfulness—are not mutually exclusive. They offer a complementary toolkit. A crucial meta-skill weaving through them is the narrative construction of agency: actively telling oneself stories of past competence and future possibility, reinforced by these practices. The act of recalling past mastery, of applying Stoic acceptance, of setting hopeful goals, of mindfully observing one's inner state—these are all part of an ongoing narrative process. 

It is the story of "I am the kind of person who can navigate this, who can learn from this, who can build something new from this." This self-story then becomes a powerful engine for further action and belief.

To make these approaches more concrete, the following table summarizes key frameworks:

VII. The Human and the Algorithm: Reflections on AI, Creativity, and Consciousness

This journey of reflection and writing has itself been intertwined with artificial intelligence, not just as a topic of philosophical interest, but as a practical tool.

A. The Ghost in the Machine: AlphaGo, Lee Sedol, and the Nature of Intuition

My interest in AI is not new. I vividly recall watching the live matches between Lee Sedol, then the world's top Go player, and AlphaGo, DeepMind's AI, in March 2016. 

As an avid player of Go—a game whose complexity and reliance on intuition made it a "Holy Grail" for AI research—I felt I "saw the world change that night." AlphaGo's victory was a watershed moment. More than just winning, it was how AlphaGo played. It made moves that were described by human grandmasters as "creative," "beautiful," and entirely unexpected—moves that initially seemed like errors but were later understood to be profoundly strategic. 

This performance challenged deeply held notions about human intuition and creativity. Go was long considered a bastion of these human qualities, supposedly beyond the reach of brute-force computation. AlphaGo, however, developed its superhuman abilities not just from studying human games, but by playing millions of games against itself, employing deep neural networks and reinforcement learning to discover strategies beyond existing human knowledge. This suggests that qualities like "intuition" and "creativity" might not be exclusively human endowments but could be emergent properties of highly complex information processing systems, whether biological or artificial. If an AI can generate novel, effective, and even "beautiful" strategies in a domain as nuanced as Go, it compels us to reconsider the very nature of these faculties.

The technological lineage from AlphaGo to the AI tools I use today, like Gemini, is direct. The principles of neural networks and large-scale learning that powered AlphaGo are foundational to modern large language models. This rapid evolution underscores the accelerating pace of AI development and its integration into diverse aspects of human life, from strategic game-playing to assisting in the articulation of philosophical reflections.

B. AI as a Cognitive Partner: The Experience with Gemini

In drafting this very article, I've been using AI—specifically Gemini & DeepSeek—to help articulate my thoughts and experiences, to write out my thoughts and my ideas into a more coherent context. It's a fascinating experience. The AI performs tasks of organization and expression that I can do myself, but it does so with a speed and at a scale that allows me to build "so much more so much faster." This is not about AI replacing human thought, but augmenting it. I get to speak out loud all my thoughts into a long stream of consciousness and AI tools help organize the ideas into paragraphs with titles, allowing me to spend my time improving the quality of the content, rather than type out and sweat over organizing the millions thoughts I have in a coherent manner. 

I also use AI to ask me questions about my writing so that I can make it more detailed, precise and useful, thereby enhancing human cognition for higher level of thinking. I’ve discovered that I enjoyed the relationship with AI as a cognitive partnern to co-create with, rather than a mindless servant or an almighty God.

VIII. An Invitation to Rewrite: Your Story, Your Meaning

This post is an exploration, born from a period of personal and professional unraveling. The path ahead remains uncertain, the story unfinished.

A. The Ongoing Journey: Embracing the Uncomfortable Now

My commitment in sharing these reflections through Planksip is to remain authentic to the process, even—perhaps especially—when it is uncomfortable, messy, and unresolved. It is difficult if not impossible NOT to romanticize struggle after the fact, to present a neat narrative of triumph because the storm has passed. But the lived experience of being in the storm is different. It is characterized by doubt, fear, and the daily effort to find footing. I believe there is a unique value in sharing from this liminal space, as it may offer a different kind of resonance for others navigating their own periods of intense change and uncertainty.

B. A Call to Reflection: Your Narrative, Your Power

Ultimately, this personal journey underscores a universal truth: the profound power of the narratives we construct about our lives. The facts of our existence—the events, the challenges, the losses, the triumphs—are the raw material. But it is the story we weave from these facts, the meaning we assign, that shapes our identity, our resilience, and our path forward. This is true for the grand, life-altering events, and for the daily interpretations that color our experience.

C. Exercise for the Reader: Re-Authoring a Chapter

In this spirit, I invite you, the reader, to engage in a brief reflective exercise. This is not about finding easy answers, but about exploring the power of your own narrative agency:

1. Identify a significant past event or period in your life that you recall as particularly traumatic, challenging, or transformative. It could be a loss, a failure, a major transition, or a moment of profound difficulty.
2. Recall the narrative you typically tell yourself (and perhaps others) about this event. What are the key plot points? Who are the main characters (including yourself)? What are the dominant emotions and themes in this story? What is the usual ending or takeaway?
3. Now, consider this event with a fresh perspective, perhaps drawing on some of the concepts explored in this article. Think about:

• Redemption/Growth: Were there any unexpected positive outcomes, lessons learned, or strengths discovered, even amidst pain? (McAdams)
• Agency: In what ways did you (or could you have) exercise choice or influence, however small? (McAdams, Existentialism)
• Meaning-Making (Frankl): Can you find or create a sense of purpose or meaning from the experience, even if it's a meaning you impose retrospectively? 
• Stoic Acceptance/Reframing: Can you distinguish what was within your control from what was not? Can any aspect of the suffering be reframed as a test of character or an opportunity to cultivate virtue? 

4. How might you rewrite parts of that narrative, not to deny the facts or the pain, but to emphasize different aspects? Could you tell a version of the story that highlights resilience over victimhood, learning over loss, or emerging wisdom over mere endurance?

This exercise is an invitation to become a more conscious author of your own life story. By actively engaging with our narratives, by questioning them, and by daring to rewrite them, we reclaim a measure of power over our past and, in doing so, open up new possibilities for our future. The path may be serpentine, but the act of narrating it, of finding and forging meaning along the way, is perhaps one of the most fundamentally human and hopeful endeavors we can undertake.

Taking Action: Your Daily Support Community

Join a space for people who feel different, or parents of children who are different, to connect, learn, grow, nurture happiness, and achieve success despite the obstacles we face. This daily support group is like a gym for the mind, with a wide variety of opportunities to reflect and learn. See link at the bottom of this page for more info.

Join the Transcendence Community

Daily Support Community for people who want to transcend the parenting they received to become a better person for ourselves and those we love. This is ideal for people who feel like they’re different, or have children who are different. Different can mean neurodivergent, LGBTQ, cultural or other.

planksip®Mercedes Noam Kostucki