Human Design

How I decided to have a child

2022-10-31T14:10:56+00:00

To answer this question, one must delve into a reflection of significant thoughts that actively took place shortly before the child was conceived. “When/if I have kids…” — this is how typical conversations about children might have started when I was in my 20s, 25s, or even 30s. The evolution of my perception can be traced through two extreme examples:

About 12 years ago, I broke up with a girlfriend because we drove each other crazy arguing about whether to baptize a child immediately after birth. There was no child on the horizon, not even close — we didn’t even live together. But the fact that kids were in the picture was just assumed.

Two years ago, I nearly broke up with Ksyusha because she wanted a child, and I was hesitating, and the issue came to a head.

But I was deeply uncertain. Below is an attempt to recreate the thought process I had that winter, on the cusp of 2020 and 2021. Keep in mind, this is being written from the perspective of late 2022.

What caused the hesitation?

A deep understanding of Human Design, of course. If there were a ranking of predisposition to raising and nurturing children, someone with my configuration would undoubtedly be at the very bottom, while Ksyusha would fall somewhere in the middle. (To be precise, it’s more about the combination of a specific parent’s configuration with a specific child’s, but I’ll simplify here.) For healthy functioning, I need 3–4 hours of “doing nothing” alone every day. I tire quickly from being in crowds and take a long time to recover from physical exertion. It’s not that I’m out of shape — I regularly do light yoga and dance. I can dance for hours at a jam session or bike 30 kilometers, but the next day (or even two), I feel drained. This isn’t like muscle soreness from using unfamiliar muscles; it’s just a total lack of energy to move. Occasionally, I have bursts of productivity where I can clean the entire apartment in one go, but these are rare and unpredictable (on average, about once a month). So, I clearly understood that having a child would mean a constant toll on my physical health for at least seven years — the period when you have to provide physical care first and then constant attention. This isn’t just about the loss of personal freedom or the ability to spend time as I want; I could easily imagine that. It’s more about the fact that my daily energy reserve would run out before the child falls asleep. And if my battery is about 30% smaller than a child’s, I’d have to live in overdrive — and that prospect scared me.

The other side of the coin However, with the knowledge of Human Design, having a child also means you almost get a technical manual for them. Although “manual” sounds too dry, even for me — let’s call it a map. If a child is a planet, then Human Design is the map to it. If you land on a new planet for the first time, you wouldn’t refuse a map, would you? It’s useful to have at least some idea about the length of its days, prevailing winds, surface terrain, and atmospheric composition. Human Design proves practical even from the first months — it provides guidance for feeding and sleep schedules, for example. It’s important to remember, though, that the map is not the territory, and the signals from the child’s body undoubtedly carry more weight than any theories. For over three years now, I’ve been trying to “break” Human Design, to find its flaws — the place where it doesn’t work. My method involves comparing its predictions with real-life outcomes. The system, however, doesn’t break easily. It even has a built-in explanation for discrepancies — the so-called “Not-Self,” a set of behavior patterns established in childhood. For an average adult who hasn’t experimented with Human Design long enough (or was lucky enough not to be conditioned in childhood), it’s nearly impossible to uncover their true, inherent nature. This makes traditional scientific validation difficult. With young children, though, it’s entirely different. There can’t be any “patches” or excuses; either the theory holds up, or it doesn’t. Observing all aspects and manifestations firsthand would be incredibly valuable for me. And you can only do that with your own child.

The emotional connection Another factor, unrelated to Human Design, was my emotional connection to Ksyusha. In her worldview, we both wanted a child and were certain of it, with no doubts or hesitations. And she had every reason to believe that. We had talked about children often and at various levels. I had speculated a lot, for example, about the negative effects of traditional schooling and how I wouldn’t want that for my child. I often caught myself thinking — and voiced it — that we’d make great parents. (Spoiler: we are.) In short, there were plenty of conversations that implied that we would have children, one way or another, and that I wanted them. There was nothing that would have made her question this. The irony is that in having such discussions, I was more inventing a desire than expressing a true, deep one. Not intentionally or consciously, of course (hello, Not-Self). I wrapped “correct answers” in the shiny packaging of my own opinions, answering questions about what’s wrong with the school system or what values are worth instilling in children. What was I basing this on? On a mishmash of cultural artifacts projected into my near future. All of human culture, from The Epic of Gilgamesh to the grandmother in the stairwell, tells us: to be human is to have children. This idea is so deeply ingrained that it’s rarely reevaluated. Instead, we tend to prepare for it by selecting the right partner, achieving financial and domestic stability, and waiting for the “right moment.” It was only when Ksyusha brought me to this threshold that I began seriously asking myself what this would mean for me personally. Did I really want this? Here’s the critical moment: I wouldn’t have asked myself this question if I hadn’t been “bitten” by Human Design. Or maybe I would have, but I would have quickly settled for the answers provided by culture — through stories, movies, books, or friends and family. “We have a good relationship, we’re in our 30s, finances are fine, and Ksyusha wants this — so why not? Go ahead, name one reason why not.” From society’s perspective, there’s no valid reason not to. Any such reasons would only come from within.

The turning point In Ksyusha’s world, her motivation was strong, clear, and deeply personal: “I don’t see much point in a life without children.” My motivation, however, was neutral — neither yes nor no — and that’s what led to my doubts. Expressing them took significant effort on my part. Hearing them took enormous strength on Ksyusha’s part. There’s so much packed into those last two sentences.

In the end, though, I saw how important this was to her and what kind of crisis she would fall into if I backed out. Before, in all my relationships, when I realized there was no future, I would break things off quickly, without much regard for my partner’s feelings. I believed that, while painful, it was inevitable — why drag things out? There would always be new experiences ahead. But this time, I stood at a crossroads: cause Ksyusha profound and potentially long-lasting pain by ending our story or start a new chapter together in a big, shared journey. My bookshelf already has plenty of notebooks with only the first few pages written.

A childhood friend once told me that parenthood is a unique experience you can’t get in any other way. Her words stayed with me, as did her assertion that my situation was textbook: at 40, men often feel the desire to have children, but the train has often already left the station. What influenced me most was her first point.

I don’t see this as a simple calculation of pros and cons. For a while now, I’ve stopped trying to “make” life happen and instead try to just observe it. What happened, happened. It couldn’t have been any other way.

My Experience in Experimentation

2021-12-27T14:10:56+00:00

Let’s go back to early September 2019, when I moved to Berlin. I had never aspired to live abroad, but Ksusha, whom I married six months prior (February 2019), was already living there. We had gotten married at the end of a journey across South America, in Argentina. Before that, I lived in Kyiv, and Ksusha in Berlin, maintaining a long-distance relationship for a year. There were no low-cost flights at the time, so I became quite an expert in crossing Poland—I even once “beat” a plane from Rzeszów to Berlin by hitchhiking. Long-distance relationships aren’t so scary; there’s a lot of intensity and space for yourself, but it’s important to know it won’t last forever. For us, the “light at the end of the tunnel” was a set date when we would leave, with no return ticket, and start traveling through South America with backpacks. But even then, the question of “where to live next” was already looming.

I was an experienced IT specialist, a rare and valued talent spoiled by an always-overheated market, working freelance from home with little thought about finances. I lived comfortably in central Kyiv with no plans to move to Europe. A legal move requires a visa, a visa requires a contract, and a contract means 40 hours a week in an office. Meanwhile, Ksusha had already been living in Europe for about six years, was close to obtaining German citizenship, and wasn’t keen on relocating to another post-Soviet country. Ukraine is obviously not Russia, but from the top of the Berlin TV tower, the differences aren’t all that visible—especially regarding social protections and a sense of security, especially if you’re a photojournalist.

Neither of us had pressing reasons to relocate—until we met each other. A “just move” option didn’t work for either of us, so we put off a final decision, agreeing to “live a few years here, a few years there” and see what happens. But first, we’d go to Germany. Whenever I visited Berlin, it was always exciting and joyful. When I finally moved, though, I had one persistent question running through my head as I carried my big blue backpack down the path from the airport building to the subway: What the hell am I doing here?

The backpack held kilos of wire for artisan crafts and also a frying pan… maybe because I thought a new one would be expensive in a first-world country, or because I simply had space in my backpack, or maybe because I was used to making my omelet in that specific pan.

As I rode the subway, I began to feel the change. But from the first day to this very day, I understood this move wasn’t forever; Germany wasn’t really my place. Human Design theory speaks of the importance of place for mental projectors, but it emphasizes people most of all. At that time, I didn’t understand anything like this, but I believe I moved here because of it.

My interest in Human Design was still strong, but three months of intense information intake had left me more confused than clear-headed. Given my distrust of the official school (as I mentioned before), I wasn’t sure where to look for answers. Then there was the move, plus a new job.

In the third week of work, I was already on a business trip to Austria, where we had to implement a fiscalization system before the year’s end. My colleague was a classic Irishman—great sense of humor, notoriously persistent, and a strong friend of alcohol. A beer fridge sat right on his desk.

Over three months, we moved through three different apartments (it’s tough to find a long-term option in Berlin), so my frying pan ended up in my backpack more often than it probably expected.

Once we settled on an apartment, I dove into the world of movement: CI + tango + Axis Syllabus + Feldenkrais method + jams + bouldering + swimming.

If you’re familiar with projectors, you may already guess where this leads. Living at this pace makes it nearly impossible to find oneself, and there was hardly any energy left for studying.

Sure, I was that person who casually asked acquaintances for their birth dates so I could “… just check something…,” and I mostly asked questions rather than confidently telling people about their design. But this happened less and less often.

My own strategy was a blind spot. My mind knew it, could tell others about it if needed, but didn’t notice that in real life, in my life, I wasn’t applying it. This is typical in the early stages of the process when knowledge creates the illusion of experience.

Six months after I moved to Germany, COVID hit. A month later, the country went into lockdown. Not only was I working from home now, but I was also down to three days a week (my company was heavily tied to cafes and bars, so they had to tighten their belt).

This was a turning point!

When instead of 40+ hours in the office with people, you have 12 hours of actual work a week, on your own rhythm, at home… When the parties and social inertia fade away… Energy naturally directs itself where it wants to go—toward studying Human Design. And so, the much-needed void for a projector’s life appeared. A space for nothingness. An opportunity to simply be. And no, this doesn’t automatically open your eyes to things, but it gives you a chance for discovery. Gradually, the knot started to untangle. I kept searching for information and stumbled upon a 90-minute lecture by Ra on projectors. You know, the one that talks about humanity’s soft toys. The one that makes you want to hug yourself and cry. But it’s a good push to finally look at your life.

During a joint trip to the Baltic Sea for three days, I told Ksusha that I didn’t want to go cycling all day but rather lie alone in a hammock. She got very upset, cried, and had a fit. It was so uncomfortable that I ended up going along.

When I lay apart from everyone at a 10-15 person gathering in a park, not initiating any conversation, Ksusha later complained, “What, you’re not going to talk to anyone now?”

But when I started meeting with a mutual friend just for one-on-one conversation…

Soon after, Ksusha said that Human Design was ruining her life.

Well…

My life, meanwhile, was healing. It was a challenging process for both of us.

“When we met, you were different…”

You can’t really argue with that. When you’ve been lying to yourself for years without realizing it, your partner’s confusion is understandable.

At some point, I got bold enough to say I wanted to try sleeping alone. I said this to a Manifestor 4/1 with the 37-40 channel and a 6th line in the red sun if you know what I mean :)

How did our relationship survive? How did I survive?

Well, I don’t know how it sounds from the outside, how much blind fanaticism you might see in my story… But from the inside, there was none.

Nobody truly “believes” in Human Design, especially not those who actively study it. I just changed behavioral patterns and observed how I felt as a result. That’s what an experiment is.

I slept one week as usual, in the same bed with Ksusha, and one week in another room. It turned out I felt better alone, so now I almost always sleep this way.

I tried grabbing attention and leading conversations in a group or, on the contrary, remaining silent until asked. I stopped initiating contact with friends. I stopped being proactive at work. It’s funny with work: the less I tried, the better my performance review.

The main thing is that this is a very logical process: each step and its aftertaste can be explained in mechanical terms.

The experiment leads to self-discovery.

It’s impossible not to love your true self.

I haven’t suddenly become someone else on a deep level—no, I’ve just dusted myself off. The fact that Ksusha and I are still together means she was initially drawn to me, not to layers of dust.

Time goes on, the wheel turns, and life becomes more and more interesting.

Technically, we’re still looking for a home, but now I’d say we’re just looking forward.

What else can you do, right?

P.S. Moving to a home office and reducing my work hours by more than half were a real blessing; it’s scary to imagine what would have happened if things had continued as they were…

How I (Didn’t) Fall for Human Design

2021-12-04T14:10:56+00:00

All the information about Human Design (HD) comes from one person, Ra Uru Hu.
For myself, I call this the canon or the dogma of HD — those parts where it’s pointless to ask, “Why?” Because. Because Ra said so, and the Voice told him so, or maybe he just made it all up — it’s a matter of faith.

To bring HD knowledge to the world and preserve its canonical purity, Ra created a school: the International Human Design School. It has a structured education program with homework, exams, and diplomas (or “medals”) at the end.

The first piece of advice a Human Design novice will receive from any representative of the official school is this: consult a specialist. Want a bodygraph reading? Go to someone certified by IHDS. Want to study the system? Enroll in their courses.

But the “appearance” of the official school immediately put me off. Because the website looks like the online version of a shopping network. And the structure feels like a sect: a course system where you can’t access the next one without completing all the previous ones. The cost increases as you go deeper… reaching the depth I was interested in costs around $6,000. How is this not a sect?

And all of that would be fine, except that the graduates of this sect — at least the side of them that’s presented online — … I can’t speak for everyone, but on average: They all say the same thing. There’s no trace of the famed uniqueness. What were you studying for three years to then parrot, word for word, about avoiding confrontations?

Strategy and authority are the answer to every question. Why create such a complex and profound system of knowledge just to reduce it to a primitive formula?

Flirting with science. “We want to appear scientific, so we’ll refer to the fact that neutrinos have mass, which means they can transmit information and imprint DNA.” But no one seems bothered that the difference between the “diameters” of a neutrino and a DNA molecule is 15 orders of magnitude (15 zeros). Neutrinos are so small they literally pass through us without interacting with a single atom in our body.

Okay, neutrinos can also participate in weak interactions, with a radius of 2 x 10^-18 meters. There’s at least some chance of that. But the joke is that mass isn’t necessary for weak interaction. Photons don’t have mass.

From the perspective of modern science, HD is heresy. Letting people who fell for all of the above teach me something, and charging me money for it? No way.

But what a joy and luxury it is to study what genuinely interests you. All summer, which, let me remind you, was completely free, I didn’t touch programming. Not once. That was very telling. It seems that, for the first time in my life, I’ve found something truly mine, my own passion.

On the one hand, I didn’t trust the analysts. On the other, I didn’t want to deprive myself of the pleasure of independent exploration. If we imagine information about HD as a giant crystal ball, the way a beginner sees it online is like tiny shards scattered in an autumn forest. Beautiful, alluring, but useless until they’re assembled into a complete picture.

The more pieces you collect, the more tangled it becomes. But that only spurs you to keep going.

I’ve quit many times, and the only thing that brought me back was the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the end, I assembled my own puzzle.

But the truth (and irony) is that I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t stumbled upon professional courses from that same official school. Without depth and structure, the information remains a shaky cloud of tags.

What matters is that without personal experience, without practical application, without honest experimentation and observation, the information remains naked. It never turns into knowledge, never becomes a foundation, and certainly never leads to changes in life.

And it’s almost impossible for this to happen in one go, in a week, a month, or even six months. It takes time and crystal-clear understanding of where to look.

The even greater irony is that it all comes down to the same strategy and inner authority, plus individual nuances. But without experience, depth, and structure, it’s impossible to interpret them correctly.

No conclusions, just pure experience. But if someone suddenly asks me where to start with HD, I’ll probably say: consult a specialist. ;)

How I met Human Design

2021-11-20T14:10:56+00:00

It happened at the Kaleidoscope festival in 2019. I had recently returned from South America, found a job in Berlin, and had a completely free summer ahead. During six months of wandering around South America, I learned to make earrings out of wire. Over there, it’s a whole lifestyle: traveling across the continent, earning a living by selling handmade jewelry. They use plant seeds, parrot feathers, minerals, and even fish scales, which can be bought cheaply in the Peruvian jungle and later sold at a higher price at a market in Buenos Aires.

Of course, I wanted to try the role of a wandering artisan myself. Back in Peru, I bought nearly 4 kilograms of wire, carried it in my backpack all the way to Cape Horn, and brought it back to Kyiv. For the festival, I decided to go as a mysterious traveler who makes extraordinarily beautiful earrings from exotic materials. Okay, I didn’t have phoenix feathers, but I did have scales from the largest freshwater fish in the world!

The idea came to me three days before the festival. I was twisting wire for 10 hours a day to at least somewhat prepare, to make something unusual. So people at the festival would notice those damned earrings, and then me, so they’d become interested, start asking questions… and that’s when I’d reveal my rich inner world to them.

Yeah, right.

Another person stops by the stand; you keep twisting the wire with feigned indifference, but inside, you freeze, waiting for them to say something. But they leave. Maybe they’ll say how beautiful the earrings are—and leave. Maybe they’ll ask how much these cost? You name a low price on the spot, the person might buy them—and leave.

I quickly became filled with loneliness. What did you expect, going alone? Is it really that hard to meet someone at a festival? Welcome to the world of Projectors…

But waiting doesn’t last forever. On the second day, I connected with my neighbor in the trading row. She sold incense sticks and painted children’s faces. Nothing special, but it felt so good just to talk to someone who found you interesting.

We discussed the lecture program and, I think, agreed that everything was futile, but we could check out what this “Human Design” thing was about. And the timing worked out so that just as we had started talking, and I wasn’t lonely for the first time in two days, the Human Design lecture was already underway. I didn’t want to go to it; I wanted to keep talking. But the girl literally pushed me to go. “Go now,” she said.

So I went…

I caught the last 30 minutes of Yana and Dima’s lecture on the Human Design system. I barely remember what they were talking about, but it was something standard: types, strategy, mechanics. There was definitely a metaphor about a car and its passenger.

It sounded like nonsense, especially the use of analogies as arguments—like, you don’t interfere with a taxi driver, so you should trust the Monopole. Flawless logic, right? Their presentation style annoyed me; it felt like I was listening to a pastor in a church somewhere in the Louisiana swamps. I was filled with indignation. I only endured to the end to ask questions.

There are no Jehovah’s Witnesses in my neighborhood, so the chance to talk to people who seriously believe in pseudoscientific typologies was a gift.

I give credit to the speakers for their patience; they calmly tried to answer all the questions. By the time we got to neutrino streams, there were only three of us left. At that point, Yana came up with a hypothesis about me, which she shared with Dima quietly. They entered my data into their phone, and her hypothesis was confirmed. That allowed the conversation to continue because I was already starting to get bored.

Dima looked at the screen and quickly gave me 3-4 points about myself. And they were really about me. I immediately related to everything he said, except one thing—digging into the past. At the time, I just didn’t understand what he meant. Digging into the past is indeed a trait of mine, as this story took place in June 2019, and I’m writing about it in November 2021.

The accuracy of the insights, casually shared in 5 minutes, was impressive. And I decided to figure out what this “Human Design” was all about. Remember, I had a completely free summer ahead…

There’s enough information about Human Design online to start exploring on your own. Even at a surface level, it was a “Wow!” The system explained me better than anything I’d encountered before.

The highlighted aspects were too un-horoscope-like to be ignored. It felt like you’d finally received your Hogwarts letter. But instead of a list of textbooks, it included a link to the source code of the universe.

It was so cool that it couldn’t possibly be real. Naturally, I started looking for the trick, trying to break the system, to understand the trick it played on the mind of someone who’s read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality four times, for that matter.

Two and a half years later, after studying and applying it in practice, I’m still trying to break it. No luck so far. But I’m happy because I feel like I’ve found something to keep myself occupied for the rest of my life.