An open invitation to explore a question that has been transforming my life for three years

A few days ago, I finished a course on fundraising for social organizations. I knew I was going to learn how to secure resources. What I didn't imagine was that I would end up finding the words to explain a question that has been transforming my life for three years.

For a long time, I felt like I was building a project. Today, I believe that, in reality, I was learning to formulate a question.

Seven years ago, I was living completely immersed in modern culture. I rushed from one place to another, spent hours in front of screens, reacted more than I reflected, and, without realizing it, I had normalized a way of living that was deeply disconnected.

I was disconnected from my body, from nature, from my attention, from my community, and even from myself.

It didn't happen overnight. It was a slow and profound process of transformation and reimagining. Little by little, I began to remember something that, deep down, I had always known: that I am not separate from life.

That I am nature.

That I breathe the same air as all people, that I depend on the same water, that I inhabit the same planet, and that my well-being is deeply intertwined with the well-being of others.

My experience was that, as the way I related to myself began to transform, so too did the way I saw other people, my community, and the territory I inhabited.

It was then that I began to suspect that the true challenge of our time is not solely ecological. It is also deeply relational.

Because I began to notice something that changed the way I see the world. Before, I saw reality as a collection of separate pieces. Today, I perceive it as a network of relationships.

Biology exists because of relationships. Ecosystems exist because of relationships. Communities exist because of relationships. Trust exists because of relationships. Even what we call identity is built in relation to other people and to the world we inhabit.

And then a question appeared that has not left me since:

What if the great crisis of our time is not only ecological, economic, or political, but also a profound crisis of our relationships?

I don't think this question replaces the others. Quite the opposite. I think it can help us look at a blind spot that we rarely place at the center of the conversation.

For decades, we have learned to better understand the different dimensions of the planetary crisis. We know much more about climate change, biodiversity, pollution, or ecosystem degradation than we did just a few decades ago. That knowledge is indispensable.

But, at the same time, we live in a paradox. We inhabit an era of digital hyperconnectivity that coexists with rising levels of isolation, polarization, distrust, and loneliness. Technologies allow us to communicate constantly, but that doesn't mean we are learning to dialogue better. We have access to more information than ever, but that doesn't imply we understand those who think differently any better.

Little by little, I began to wonder whether contemporary culture, without necessarily intending to, has also been eroding some deeply human capacities.

School often taught us to memorize more than to imagine. To answer more than to ask. To compete more than to collaborate.

Social media favor immediate reaction far more than deep listening. Algorithms tend to reinforce our own certainties rather than carefully expose us to different perspectives. The economy frequently rewards competition far more than collaboration and the patient building of trust.

I don't think we have lost our capacity to imagine, dialogue, or collaborate. I believe these are capacities we have stopped practicing enough. And, like any human capacity, when it ceases to be cultivated, it begins to weaken.

For three years, I thought I was designing a methodology. Today, I believe that, in reality, I was trying to understand what the conditions are that allow a community to reimagine, dialogue, and collaborate when those capacities have been deeply eroded.

After these years of practice, research, and facilitation, I have arrived at a hypothesis that I wish to continue exploring alongside others.

It is not a certainty. It is an invitation to investigate.

My hypothesis is that collective imagination, generative dialogue, and conscious collaboration constitute a minimal set of capacities worth cultivating if we want to increase our collective capacity to face complex problems.

I call this set of capacities the Human Tripod.

Not because it alone explains social transformation, but because I suspect it represents a minimal foundation from which that transformation can begin to emerge.

Over time, I also came to understand that cultivating these capacities implies traveling a path.

I decided to call this path the Journey from Ego to Eco.

It is guided by three deeply simple and, at the same time, deeply transformative movements.

Remember. Against forgetting.

Remember that we are nature. Remember our interdependence with all life. Remember that our existence depends on an immense network of relationships that sustains us.

Recognize. Against denial.

Recognize our responsibility toward future generations, toward biodiversity, and toward the territory we inhabit.But also recognize our own assumptions, mental frameworks, and disconnections: from ourselves, from others, and from the living world.

Reconnect. Against fragmentation.

Reconnect with ourselves, with nature, with our communities, and with the possibility of building shared futures.

The bioregion as a living laboratory

It was with this intention that the Collective Imagination project was born.

What began as a deeply personal search gradually started to become a shared practice.

We chose to begin this path in the Xalapa–Coatepec–Xico–Teocelo bioregion, an extraordinarily biodiverse region where cloud forests, rivers, coffee plantations, farming communities, universities, social organizations, businesses, and people deeply committed to the territory coexist.

Not because we think all the answers are here. But because we believe that answers are always born in specific places. Transitions do not happen in the abstract. They happen in territories, among people who share water, mountains, histories, food, and a common future.

This bioregion can become a living laboratory to explore a question that likely transcends its own borders:

How can we recover the human capacities necessary to collaborate in the face of the complex challenges of our time?

Toward a new sociocultural infrastructure

Our next step is to continue facilitating Communities of Practice in the bioregion. During the first year, we aim to consolidate six communities where this hypothesis can continue to be put into practice, learning from experience and evolving alongside those who choose to walk this path.

But, in reality, the dream is even bigger. We don't only dream of facilitating workshops.

We dream of contributing to building a true sociocultural infrastructure for our bioregion.

Because just as a forest needs fertile soil to regenerate, a community needs fertile relationships to imagine its future.

But it also needs spaces where those relationships can emerge. Because every relationship occurs somewhere.

We are always inhabiting a space, and the space we inhabit profoundly influences the quality of our conversations, our capacity to trust, and what we are able to imagine together.

For a long time, we have designed spaces around the logic of transaction: places where people meet because they need to buy, sell, produce, or exchange something.

But perhaps we need to recover another kind of space.

Spaces where the primary value is not transaction, but relationship.

Spaces whose purpose is not to produce consumption, but to produce trust.

Spaces where we meet not because we have to get something in return, but because we recognize that the encounter itself is a fundamental human need.

That is why we dream of a new generation of third spaces: places consciously designed to cultivate relationships. A place where a farmer can converse with a researcher.

Where a business owner can imagine new economies alongside an artist.

Where a community can deliberate on the future of its territory.

Where organizations working in parallel can discover they share common questions, challenges, and dreams.

Where someone can simply stop by for a coffee or a bite to eat and know that they will likely find people to talk with about life, about the territory, and about the future.

Not because the space has an economic agenda to fulfill, but because its design and fundamental purpose is to strengthen the bonds that make a more collaborative society possible.

A space whose greatest outcome is not a completed transaction, but a cultivated relationship.

Today, we are taking an important step. We are forming a civil association (NGO) and beginning to weave collaborations with people and organizations that share a similar concern.

One of them is EcoDiálogo from the Universidad Veracruzana, with whom a collaboration is emerging that deeply excites us due to the affinity of our purposes.

We are seeking micro-grants that allow us to continue this process, keep facilitating Communities of Practice, and continue exploring this hypothesis alongside our bioregion.

I am not writing this invitation because I believe I have found definitive answers.

I am writing it because, after three years of practice, research, and facilitation, I feel that I have finally learned to clearly formulate the question I want to dedicate the coming years of my life to exploring.

And I suspect this question is too big to walk alone.

Because perhaps the most important challenge of our time is not only learning new technologies, designing better policies, or finding more efficient solutions.

Perhaps we also need to recover our capacity to be together.

To listen to each other. To imagine beyond the limits we have inherited. To remember that, before being consumers, professionals, organizations, or isolated individuals, we are deeply interdependent human beings.

We are part of a web of relationships that sustains us.

If this reflection resonates with you, if you are part of an organization, a foundation, a university, a business, a collective, or are simply a person who also asks similar questions, I would love to talk.

Not only to talk about funding.

Above all, to think together.

To put this hypothesis to the test.

To learn.

To make mistakes.

To keep imagining.

Because I believe societies do not change only because extraordinary organizations exist.

They change when there are places where ordinary people and organizations begin to meet, to recognize each other, and to discover that they share a common future.

Perhaps the regeneration of our territories begins with something seemingly simple, but profoundly transformative:

Meeting again.

Belonging again.

Remembering again that we were never separate.

Because regenerative futures need regenerative relationships.

And regenerative relationships need spaces where they can emerge.