Obstacles to Friendship

I still remember the exact moment when I realized I'd been swimming in water

I didn't enjoy.

I was standing in a classroom—my classroom—watching students dutifully complete assignments that would never change them. Their eyes, glazed with the practiced compliance that our School 1.0 rewards, reflected back the uncomfortable truth: I had become part of the very system that had dimmed my own light years ago.

That night, I couldn't sleep. My heart raced with a question that wouldn't let me go:

What if there's another way to learn?

What if there's another way to live?

The Birth of a Curio

This is how Spill the Water began—not as an institution or a program, but as a series of questions. Questions that have since blossomed into what I call Curio: a space of genuine curiosity where we can spill the water we've been swimming in and discover what lies beneath our unquestioned givens about learning and living well.

Today, I'm inviting you into this question. Not because I have the answer, but because I believe the exploration itself is worth giving a shot.

What We're Really Building

On paper, Spill the Water is an iterative learning community designed around three pillars:

• Iteration: Falling in love with the process of learning, trying, and trying again

• Aliveness: Reconnecting with what makes our eyes shine and hearts race

• Nutritious Collectives: Building communities of flavors, intimacy, and kinship

  
  

But that's just the surface. What we're really building is a refuge for those who've felt that quiet desperation—that sense that there must be more to life than what we learned.

Well, Curio is a playground for people brave enough to hit the reset button and try again.

And again. And again.

Building.

Practicing.

Slowly crafting.

And then one day, all of a sudden...

The Curriculum of Becoming

Here, there are no grades, no tests, no rubrics for success. Instead, there is only the question: What emerges when you build games in pursuit of something that matters to you with both precision and heart?

Our curriculum unfolds in six movements:

1. Awakening Curiosity: Recognizing the water we swim in

2. The Sacred Practice of Iteration: Falling in love with the process

3. Cultivating Nutritious Collectives: The alchemy of witnessing and being witnessed

4. Navigating the Edge of Possibility: Finding flow between structure and emergence

5. Integrated Aliveness: Embodiment and expression

6. The Offering: From personal mastery to collective contribution

   
   

This isn't about acquiring information. It's about transformation—the kind that happens when you stop chasing approval and start pursuing what makes you feel alive.

The Dance of Human and Machine

Here's where it gets interesting.

We're building this sanctuary for human aliveness at the exact moment when artificial intelligence is transforming how we work, create, and connect. This isn't coincidence—it's opportunity.

While the world debates whether AI will replace us, we're exploring a different question: How might this technology amplify what makes us most human?

In our Curio, AI serves not as replacement but as ally. It handles what machines do best—tracking patterns across thousands of iterations, connecting dots between disparate insights, documenting fleeting moments of breakthrough—so that humans can focus on what only we can do: being fully present with each other.

Imagine a learning environment where:

• Your practice sessions are captured and woven into a visual map of your journey

• Patterns in your iterations become visible, revealing hidden strengths and edges for growth

• Connections between your discoveries and others' light up, creating unexpected collaborations

• The technical aspects of documentation fade into the background, letting you remain fully immersed in the experience

  
  

This about creating more space for the messy, beautiful, unpredictable moments of human connection that no algorithm can replicate.

The Stakes Are Real

I won't pretend this is just another experiment. The stakes feel too high for that kind of modesty.

We're watching as systems crumble around us—education that deadens rather than enlivens, work that exhausts rather than energizes, technology that isolates rather than connects.

Each night, I still wake sometimes with doubts drumming in my chest. Have I lost my mind? Who am I to think we can build something different?

But then I remember the eyes of students I've watched come alive when they finally pursue something that matters to them. I remember the transformation I've witnessed when people are truly seen. And I know we have to try.

Because the alternative—continuing to swim in water that's drowning us while pretending we can breathe—is no longer an option.

An Invitation

This is where you come in.

If you've ever felt that strange disconnect between what you're told success looks like and what actually makes you feel alive...

If you've ever wondered why learning in school often feels so different from learning things you actually care about...

If you've ever experienced the strange satisfaction of trying something again and again until you get it just right...

Then you already understand what Spill the Water is about. You've tasted Aliveness.

Spill the Water is for the dreamers, the makers, the ones standing at the crossroads of disillusionment and hope. For those unmoored and awakened by the fractures in our familiar world.

It will ask for your trembling yes, your nervous sweat, your belly-laughs and heart-breaks. It will demand that you fall in love with the reset button in your real life.

But I promise you this: You won't be alone in the journey.

We'll be there—fellow travelers who've also chosen to spill the water to discover the possibilities that rest beneath.

So I ask you, as gently and urgently as I can:

What might our future look like if you gave yourself permission to build and learn with purpose?

Will you join us in spilling the water?