I thought I was leading the way – but I was just as lost

"It won't wait"

In my last post, I said I was writing to redraw a map — for myself, and for those who feel unmoored in a world where the rules have quietly changed.

But that map didn’t come from theory.
It came from a crack I didn’t expect — a moment that made me question everything I thought I knew about learning, effort, and helping others grow.

This is the first story that forced me to look back and reexamine my entire frame of reference.

I once believed that if someone had the chance to study abroad, to access open thinking, modern methods, great teachers — they would change.
I believed that with the right conditions, people would naturally rise.

So I tried to create those conditions: choosing the right field, school, materials, teachers, trial tests, assessments, roadmaps — like I was designing a solid path for someone I cared about to walk out of the same stagnation I once knew.

I know that person was trying too.
But I also saw — with a quiet kind of pain — that the speed of AI had already outpaced what most people can adapt to.

And that feeling — wasn’t anger or disappointment.
It was a deep ache: like I had boarded a train that couldn’t stop.
And when I turned back, I saw someone I love running, trying, gasping — but falling farther and farther behind.

I didn’t know whether to pull the brakes. Or jump off.
But I knew one thing for sure: this train won’t wait.
And if I don’t learn how to navigate this new terrain, I’ll be swept away too.

It wasn’t that they didn’t try.
It was that I didn’t fully understand what was shifting beneath our feet.

I no longer blamed them.
I started asking myself:
What if the map I believed in… had expired?

I grew up in a world where effort was everything.
If you tried hard enough, you’d be rewarded. That was the promise.

But I’m no longer in that world.
I’m in one where effort alone is not enough, and where our very selves are no longer built from the same tools.

AI hasn’t just changed the way we work.
It’s quietly bending the way we learn, perceive ourselves, and build motivation.

When a machine can write essays, create learning plans, analyze case studies —
then “learning to perform” is no longer an advantage.
Now, what matters is:
learning to survive,
and recognizing which systems are shaping your thoughts before you even realize it.

And that’s when I began to understand:
I was never really the guide.
I, too, was lost in a world that’s quietly rewriting itself.

I needed to redraw the map — before I could hand it to anyone else.

So I started writing. Not to teach.
But to ask:

• Where did I learn wrong?
• What assumptions was I standing on?
• And what do I need to keep going — without losing myself — in this age of being constantly reprogrammed?

This post is just the first cut.
A failure — but a necessary one.
Because only when the old map fails… do we begin to take the terrain seriously.