Fifth Issue: Resilience Rooted in Identity

April 2025

By analuisa gamboa @ Unsplash.com

Welcome to Systems & Stories

In a world that idolizes scale, speed, and disruption, we often overlook where true resilience comes from.

This month, we invite you to slow down.

To listen.

To remember.

Because beneath the rush to innovate lies something deeper: roots, ritual, rhythm—the quiet systems that hold cultures, communities, and people together even as the world around them changes.

In this issue, we explore what it means to live within a system—not just build or change one. We begin in Oaxaca, where the spirit of Guelaguetza pulses not as performance, but as practice. We trace the loops of gentrification, where feedback isn’t always visible until something sacred begins to disappear. And we end with a haunting reminder from the movie Click: that the systems we build in our lives don’t just shape our futures—they shape those who come after us.

This isn’t just a story about place. It’s a call to see the invisible patterns we’re part of—and to ask, with fresh eyes and open hearts:

What system am I feeding?

Thanks for joining us this April.

Let’s begin.

Paco Araujo, 

Editor, Systems & Stories