After the exam, Wittman explained the itinerary for the next few days, which would ultimately involve a lot of thinking about myself. I had already been doing a lot of this, because the end of Cooper’s life signaled the closing of a chapter for me as well. I’m not where I’d suspected I’d be at this age—not only here, in Costa Rica, and the many places I’d traveled to before this trip, but also without a strong desire for the marriage-and-kids track. I am aware that things are changing: I have two gray hairs, lower back pain that could turn into something serious if I don’t act on it, and a fear that the decisions I make from here on out will hold a little more weight than they used to.
Later that night at a family-style dinner under the stars, I met the founder of The Vessyl, Josh Stanley. Over passed plates of yuca gnocchi, pejibaye croquettes, and octopus ceviche, Stanley explained how he’s no stranger to getting people to understand something that hasn’t yet entered the mainstream, referencing the time he and his brothers helped to save the life of a five-year-old girl named Charlotte Figi with the hemp strain they were growing at home—this was in 2013, when cannabis was still taboo, and Charlotte’s Web would eventually spark a CBD movement.
During this meal, I started to hear whisperings of “human design,” which I initially thought was just a fancy way of saying “personality.” But after chatting with lead facilitator, Svetlana Parmar, I learned it’s actually a very involved personal mapping system, like a postmodern astrological chart that draws on several things, including the Kabbalah, the I Ching, numerology, the chakra system, and quantum physics. Developed in 1987 by Alan Robert Krakower (who later changed his name to Ra Uru Hu), the system uses your birth date, time, and location to generate your “bodygraph.” It also happens to be a trending practice on TikTok.
