“Despair is intellectually lazy”

A world expanding interview with eco-philosopher [and my creative crush!] Ximena.

This is CREATIVE CRUSH, a four-part series where, each week in Feb, I feature a creator that I have a creative crush on. All of my crushes are sensitive, creative, and intuitive humans [per the Crybaby Mystic manifesto] and they answer my questions on how these qualities weave themselves into their lives.

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I’ve followed Ximena’s work for a couple of months now, and genuinely everything she writes puts my jaw on the floor. Her perspectives and contributions to the online space are SO unique: every single post, podcast episode, email, etc. is riddled with ideas that I’ve never considered, perspectives that literally create new pathways inside my brain. I can feel my mind and sense of possibility being expanded when I engage with her work. Being in Ximena’s orbit is like entering a completely new world that is lush with greenery and stardust and sovereignty.

Ximena is an eco-philosopher who specializes in ethics, so her whole world view is derived from this ethos. And in my opinion, she is exactly the kind of world-builder we need right now.

She’s the living embodiment of what it means to engage deeply with your own mind/body/soul + the natural world with integrity and reverence. Ximena and her work remind me that not only is building a better world possible, but that there are people like her out here every single day laying down the bricks, embodying new ways of being with each other and ourselves that are more intentional and spacious. She reminds me that we can subvert oppressive systems thoughtfully when we reclaim our imagination and use it as a lens through which to engage with the world around us.

I highly recommend entering Ximena’s orbit in literally any capacity, even if you just follow her on Instagram. You will be changed for the better [just read this interview and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.]

SECTION 01: SENSITIVE

When’s the last time you cried and why?

I cry almost daily, from all sorts of emotions. But the last time I really cried, the kind where your breath changes, was right after finishing Alchemised. It was the book chosen for a bookclub I'm in and I had to message all my friends immediately after. That final sentence broke something open. I'll think about it forever.

What doors has your sensitivity opened up for you?

Today, I'm proud of myself for letting my sensitivity open up possibilities. I tried to silence it for so long, to stay in the "rational mind," whatever that means. But my sensitivity kept dragging me toward the parts of knowing that don't submit so easily. I couldn't stay in pure rationalism. Something in me kept saying this isn't everything. I had to listen.

Listening to my sensitivity, and the response-ability that comes with it, opened a door into the magic of the universe. I can earnestly say that I feel as if the Earth, the Universe, is speaking and I can finally hear it. It's what allowed me to begin a real, sustainable healing from chronic illness. It opened the door to create what is now Rooted Impact. It gave me the courage to reach out to other humans in search of friendship and community.

On a scale of 1-10, 1 being soft and mushy and 10 being hard as a crab shell, where does your sensitivity fall today? Why?

I would say 2. I just facilitated a philosophy workshop on how to ask better questions to over 30 incredible people from all over the world. I can't be in that kind of exchange without becoming completely porous. I absorb everything. Afterward I need hours alone, sometimes a full day, just to process and feel the edges of myself again.

When your sensitivity is hungry, what do you feed it?

I feed my sensitivity slowness and appreciation, which usually means tarot and oracle cards, followed by slow journaling. And when I can, quiet and slow walks in the forest, just me and the trees and whatever thoughts and feelings arise. I moved to the forest for this. The city was eating me alive, it was too much input. Here, the quiet envelops you.

SECTION 02: CREATIVE

If your creativity was a landscape, what would it look like?

A dense forest at dusk. That hour when the light goes amber and then blue, when edges start to blur. Things feel possible that didn't feel possible before.

What creative ideas or concepts have really turned you on [read: made you horny] recently?

I've been building an argument that despair is intellectually lazy. We've created this cultural reflex where mere critic signals sophistication, where cynicism passes for insight, and people who still believe in things are treated as naïve. I want to take that apart. I want to show that despair is often just a failure of imagination dressed up as realism. Staying alive to possibility, staying available to action, is the harder and more honest position. I just uploaded a pod episode on this, but I also sent a pitch about it for a TED Talk, so fingers crossed!!!

What’s the last creative idea you jotted down somewhere [give us zero context]

Structure as - clouds, tree(s), stones, roots, mycelium

Who do you have a big fat creative crush on at the moment and why?

This is hard! I admire so many incredible women, many of whom I'm fortunate enough to know (like you, Ayu!) I started listing them and there were too many. BUT I'll choose Summer Wagner because I just added one of her photographs to my latest substack, and because her work is incredible! I was also recently gifted one of her photographs and I love it. Her work inspires me deeply, her pieces feel like dreams, beautiful but also kind of scary.

SECTION 03: INTUITIVE

When’s the last time your intuition was right about something?

A few days ago, I was in Todos Santos. I had surf lessons in the morning but also a virtual commitment right after, but I just KNEW it was going to be rescheduled. I went surfing. The call was rescheduled.

This happens to me ALL the time, knowing whether an event will actually happen, whether someone will show up or not. In university I always knew when a class was going to be cancelled. I followed my intuition every time. Never regretted it.

How do you know the difference between your intuition versus your anxiety?

This took me years. They can feel so similar at first, both want your attention, both claim to be protecting you.

What I've learned in my body is that anxiety loops. It circles the same territory again and again, arguing with itself, offering evidence, building cases. It speaks fast and won't let you finish a thought before starting another. It's urgent yet never quite clear.

Intuition speaks and waits. There's a settledness to it, even when the message is hard or even when it says no, run, leave, stop. Intuition doesn't argue, it just knows, and then it goes quiet, and you're left with the choice of whether to listen.

Learning to tell them apart is still a practice. But I know my signals now, I know the specific grammar my body uses. I know the difference between a clenched stomach that says "danger" and a clenched stomach that says "you're making this up". They're not the same clench.

If your intuition was a god(dess) what would they be like?

She would be like a rush of wind that rattles the leaves and makes the birds sing.

What’s your favorite way of connecting with your intuition?

Dreams, or more specifically the liminal space between sleeping and waking. In Spanish I call it “dormitar” which I think translates to "doze" in English, but it doesn't land the same way. I've developed a whole practice around this threshold state or oracular dreaming. The method is you stay in that in-between place as long as you can, if you have a question you repeat it over and over, if you are just reaching you stay there and follow whatever arises. It feels like a window, sometimes only a few seconds, where you have access to a different kind of knowing. I've learned to stay in that window. When you wake, things are clearer.

Also: boredom! Real boredom, not scrolling-while-bored, not filling time with content. Actual unstructured emptiness where there's nothing "to do" and nowhere to be and your mind goes fallow. That's when things grow and when I hear things I couldn't hear while I was being “productive”.

SECTION 04: HUMAN

In your opinion, what’s the connection between sensitivity, creativity, and intuition?

They form a cycle of aliveness: sensitivity receives, intuition recognizes, creativity responds.

Sensitivity is aperture, how open the lens is, how much reality you allow in. Intuition is an intelligence that is pre-verbal, pre-rational. Creativity is metabolization.

When all three are in sync, you become a kind of instrument. Life plays you. You receive, you recognize, you respond. And then you receive again.

What message does your inner child have for us today?

Keep asking the uncomfortable questions! And stay close to the part of you that didn't know yet what was supposed to be impossible.

Describe a recent moment where you felt your aliveness.

Funny I was just thinking about this a few days ago. I was in Todos Santos and I took a shower around 3pm. There were no clouds in sight, so the sun was powerful. I was in a semi-open shower; I’d left the windows open and the light was hitting the water in just the perfect way. I could see the water sparkle, and I was reaching for them, trying to feel that light in my hands while the heat of the sun touched my skin and the water calmed my body, still tired from surfing. I could still smell the ocean in my hair. I remember feeling so alive and present.

What’s your favorite human* quality about yourself?
*imperfect, awkward, silly, weird, etc.

My inability to be casual about anything, every interest becomes a full investigation, every question spirals into philosophy, I can't just "like" something, I have to understand it completely.

Ximena is a Mexican Eco Philosopher who specializes in Ethics.

For over a decade, I’ve worked with individuals, organizations, and international spaces to help people think more clearly about power, systems, responsibility, and meaning; without outsourcing their intelligence to ideology or trends. My work is grounded in philosophy, critical theory, and ecological thinking, but always oriented toward lived experience. I’m less interested in teaching what to think than in helping people recover their capacity to think with depth, coherence, and integrity in a world that profits from confusion. I guide thinkers and seekers who are ready to unlearn the paradigms they’ve inherited and reimagine their place in a living, conscious world.

✺ Join Rooted Impact Volume II, my Eco Philosophy program.
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