Archives for October 2014

The Impact Point

October 28, 2014 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

Would it surprise you to know that there is, in fact, a point to this blog?

The home page reads…

The Revolutionary Misfit site is a forum for thought, conversation and inspiration on the topic of impact mindfulness.

So, if you kinda get an inkling about that vague word, impact, you’d at least be getting really warm, as you’re struggling to grasp the impact point.

Because the fact is, we all have one…

It’s hard to get away from it, really.

Remember when grocery store check-out clerks always would ask, “paper or plastic?”

Seems like an innocuous choice, but an impactful one nonetheless.

If you stop to consider that plastic is made of the same substance that when burned releases dreaded carbon into the atmosphere.

And if you consider that normal plastic basically never breaks down, environmentally.

And then there’s the matter of so much plastic waste ending up as floating garbage dumps in our oceans, or in the bellies of fish and sea mammals.

Of course, there’s a problem with paper too…it can get confusing.

So, the decision, as small and insignificant as it might at first blush seem, has impact…

As does the stupid act of giving us that choice to begin with.

Whenever you use a public restroom facility, do you leave the light on, or do you flip it off?

Again, a choice with impact.

When you shop for groceries, do you buy locally grown stuff, or manufactured food, filled with chemicals, and that has to be shipped in from afar?

Impact-full choice, once again.

And then there’s the bigger impacts…

Like what we choose to do with the vast majority of our life time allotment in exchange for those little green pieces of paper adorned with images of dead notables.

Who we vote for.

What we consume, physically, or mentally.

How we use our “free” time.

What we contribute towards enhancing the well-being of others, including the less fortunate.

How we simply treat other people.

What we think of them if they happen to have been borne different from us.

So, you see, there probably isn’t a more point-full topic to blog about than impact.

This blog is simply an attempt to get people to pay more attention to the impacts they have on a moment to moment basis.

You know, like to leave the earth (and its inhabitants) better than the way we found it (and them).

And I believe that there are three things that generally impede our being mindful of impacts…

Self-interest (especially the economic variety)
Small us thinking
Impact blinders

If you desire to know more, there is a plethora of posts regarding each of these impediments.

But, in our westernized world, it’s private property that gets the lion’s share of our mindfulness.

We work hard to acquire it, maintain and grow it, protect it and ultimately pass it on in some form or another (sale, inheritance, etc.).

We only ask of others that they refrain from impacting our shit in any negative way.

What they do with everything else…who cares!

That pretty much sums up the narrow spectrum of popular thought regarding impact.

“Don’t tread on me”, becomes our battle-cry as we engage in grave struggles in the name of private property protection (we call it freedom, since that provides better motivation)…

We even coin a new phrase for the acquisition of stuff and immortalize that in our most cherished freedom document…

We call it…

The pursuit of happiness.

But then the reality finally hits that this is a non-sustainable notion.

As we just witnessed in 2008, when the excesses of Wall Street’s great decade of capital sequestration ended up impacting Main Street in a negative way as the value of everyone’s stuff plummeted…

Except for those that didn’t have any to begin with…

In that case, the people themselves were devalued.

Impact is simply hard to get away from…it’s sort of built in, like a physical law.

Now, granted, hedging against all hell breaking loose may not be the most laudable reason to be impact mindful.

But, hey, at least it’s a reason.

Working to enhance the enjoyment of all life forms on this planet helps assure that they won’t try just as hard to rob me of mine.

I Am a Lumberjack

October 26, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Is 53 too old to begin thinking about what you want to be in life?

I want to grow up to be a ________________.

Doesn’t sound like a very mature statement for a man of my age to be making, does it?

Yesterday, I took a trip with some old friends to the Oregon coast, about 1.5 hours from Portland.

I’ve alluded to the fact of my possible near future relocation to Portland…if you’ve been paying attention.

The problem is deciding what I would do there?

So, I thought about maybe giving lumberjack-ing a try?

I’ve heard the pay’s good. The breakfasts are hearty. The work exhilarating. You’re in nature all the time…albeit with the purpose of tearing it down.

And wouldn’t it be super cool to answer the question of “what do you do” with…

“Well, to be honest, I am a lumberjack.”

Of course, I’m kidding.

I probably wouldn’t last very long in the lumberjack business.

Perhaps not even as long as I lasted in the lawyering business.

So, that leaves me with the lingering question…what in the Sam Hill am I going to do in Portland?

But, then again, viciously pondering that question to the point of delirium, perhaps is not the best use of my brain cells.

What’ll I do?

I’ll do something, that’s what!

I mean, there’s a thousand ways to skin a cat, or make a buck…right?

Hey, if you can make a mint selling mediocre quality doughnuts in the shape of voodoo dolls, cocks and balls, then there’s probably something I could sell to these suckers out here as well…

And if they pass Measure 91, my ties to Latin America may become even more lucrative!

Portlanders are a hearty lot, like the pioneers who saw those tall timbers and decided to bring them down and make something with them.

They aren’t content with the regular beers that the rest of the world drinks…no sir, they want to brew their own brands, with names like Poop Deck Porter, or Bitter Bitch Pale Ale.

They’re really fairly nuts, and that convenient fact dovetails nicely with my plans for financial security…if there even is such a thing.

So, you know what, I think I’ll stop the incessant worry about what I’m going to do and just do…

something.

After all, what we do is not who we are, even though that’s generally how we answer the question of our existence, for purposes of communication facilitation.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Fine and you?”

“So, what do you do?”

“I am a lumberjack.”

“REALLY, my cousin Pauly, he’s a lumberjack too…”

and just like that, another meaningless conversation is borne.

From now on, I’m going to be answering that question with a simple four letter word…

L – I – F – E.

Because, I don’t want mine to be defined nor illustrated by what “I do” in exchange for those little green pieces of paper adorned with the faces of dead notables.

How about you?

On Being a non-Political Spiritual Person

October 23, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

A while back I wrote a post about being an NRSP (non-Religious, Spiritual Person).

This morning, I want to expand that a little, to the realm of politics.

For some, politics and religion are basically one and the same. So, in that sense, this post may risk redundancy.

But, in my mind, there is at least a subtle difference in the real world, if not the one inhabited by habitual watchers of the Fox News channel.

When I say non-political, I don’t mean abstaining from involvement in causes that have political impact. Many great changes in our society came about as a result of that…the Civil Rights Act of 1964 immediately comes to mind.

No, on the contrary, activism is a good, even spiritual, thing to get involved in…it’s a vehicle for impact, for sure.

What I’m getting at is this “game” of politics that we enjoy playing perhaps a bit too much. The one that presupposes winners and losers, like any typical sporting event. Except, in this case, people and planet are at stake, not championship trophies, or rings.

The game that pits the blues against the reds. The one that’s the frequent source of vitriol seen in Facebook comments and Twitter feeds. The one that propels the status quo. The one that assures nothing ever gets done in the nation’s capital, or in the capital of your state.

The one of political ads claiming that the Ebola virus is the greatest threat civilization has ever faced, while continuing to deny the scientifically proven planetary threat of climate change.

I tend to stay out of political arguments. Now, is that always the case? No, I sometimes wade in gently, if I feel that things are being said that defy logic and common sense.

But it usually only results in getting called names, like libtard. Not sure where that one originated, but you see it a lot lately.

The heat of hateful political discourse has been turned up to unbearable levels since the election of Barack Obama as the first black President of the U.S.A.

Why is that?

No, I’m not about to play the race card. So, please read on…

Obama has been a politically polarizing figure like no other. There are some who think he can do no wrong…others that he can do no right…and a few in the middle.

I believe the middle is the safest place to be, unless you feel the need for gang affiliation. Because it’s those on the fringes who always seem ready to rumble and rip each others throats out.

And it’s those fringes that represent the zones of political discourse experiencing the most rapid growth.

That’s too bad and actually quite threatening because we need change in our society, now like no other time in my lifetime.

But if all we can do is disagree, sometimes solely for the sake of disagreeing and feeling that euphoric high of rightness (which some equate to right-eous-ness), then we shouldn’t be too optimistic about positive change happening.

The rich will keep getting richer and the poor poorer and more alienated from the idea of the American Dream…

The “too big to fail” Corporatocracy will continue to control the economic and political system for their selfish benefit in the name of capitalistic freedom…

And the weather will keep getting hotter and weirder, species will continue to disappear, oceans will rise, storms will rage and the human race will rapidly head towards the next great event of planetary extinction.

I don’t believe the answer to our problems will be found in any political argument.

I rather believe that it lies within a shift in the paradigm of thought.

To one that recognizes that we’re all in this boat together…

the reds and the blues…

the us and the them…

And really the last thing that matters is what your voter registration card might say.

And, no, this is not an admonition against voting, ala Russell Brand. After all, we can’t just sit back and blame the politicians…they’re just puppets and we hold the strings that pull them via that important constitutionally granted power.

It’s an encouragement not to participate in the game of polarizing political discourse.

To be a non-Political Spiritual Person.

To take the politics out of discourse and turn all that into discussions of mutual benefit.

image credit: Truthout.org via Compfight cc

Portland Rains

October 22, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

There are some things I love about Portland. I love the coffee houses. I love the craft beer. I love the art. I love all the hippies and weirdos. Yesterday, I got a little taste of the natural side of Portland…loved it.

But, you know what?

These Portland rains don’t show up anywhere on that lovely list.

I tend to take pride in being a nature lover, but my reluctance to even step outside today is revealing me a bit of a fraud.

After all, what’s more natural than rain?

I finally did make it out to the coffee house where I snapped the photo above and where I sit writing this fine piece of predominantly pointless prose.

I don’t normally allow myself to be hermitized by rain. It does fall in Costa Rica quite frequently.

Maybe it’s because I’m here with virtually no money, relying on the good graces of couch surfing hosts to keep me dry at night…and coffee houses like this one to do the daily trick.

It’s hard to feel affectionate toward “the elements” when circumstances of your own choosing force you to be exposed to them.

Damn it, I got things I want to do, places I want to go, stuff I want to see, and the rain, well, it just interferes.

If you let it.

We allow a lot of things to interfere, now don’t we?

The natural phenomenon that’s rain doesn’t pay a hipster’s heed to our plans. It just falls squarely upon them…without the slightest tinge of remorse.

We live in a harsh and cruel world like that. In fact, nothing really pays heed to our plans, if you think about it…

Maybe that’s why Steinbeck once wrote that…

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Well, he actually stole that line from the poem To a Mouse, by Robert Burns of Scotland.

Whether it’s the weather, time, circumstances, happenstances, people, problems, or our own peculiarities…

it seems the making of a plan is part in parcel of the perpetuation of a failure.

I’m here on a mission. My mission is to hatch my plan of moving, repatriating, to this fine city of Portland, Oregon.

This place of hippies and hipsters, voodoo doughnut dolls and wads of weirdness lurking around every corner.

And the rain…lots of rain.

I’ve already had at least one Portlander give me that cockeyed, are you freaking nuts look, as soon as I mentioned that I wanted to move from there to here.

That’s OK. I’ve learned to plan to prepare for failure. And I’ve had a ton of practice.

I know nothing about this move will be easy.

And this rain has me waffling from absurd confidence to flashes of abject fear, as I consider how to do relatively simple things like find a place to live and a way to pay for it.

I keep having these visions of ending up a lowly part of the homeless subculture that openly exists here.

Portland might be the most liberal city in the U.S.

But it still has a harsh climate, as I’m sure any of those guys would attest.

And it’ll chew this Costa Rica Guy up and spit him out faster than you can say…

revolutionary misfit.

Plans are an inconvenience we humans just have to put up with. It’s hard to get very far in this life without them. And there’s a never ending supply of them.

I guess, in that sense, they could be considered a renewable resource…

like Portland rains.

The Flip Side of Freedom

October 19, 2014 by costaricaguy 3 Comments

My last post included a weird line that could’ve left some out there scratching their heads and mumbling to themselves…

WTF?

But, you see, the very fact that we talk to ourselves, without considering ourselves nuts, while considering everyone else who does the same, completely, sort of gets at my point…

That we constantly hallucinate that there is an immortal little man or woman, as the case may be, inside our heads, at the driving wheel of our lives…

Most of our thoughts give support to that nutty notion.

OK, the line I’m referencing read…

Because a place inhabited with folks without those glorious twinkles, is a place too full of loathing, and not nearly enough losing.

Allow me to elaborate…

You see when we’re full of self, or ego, we tend to do either one of two things…

We hate ourselves for not being as good as those other competing selves,

Or, we hate those other selves for not being as good as us.

Okay, “hate” might be too harsh a word. Is loathe better? How about dislike, distrust, or maybe, disassociate…??

All one needs to do is to walk around downtown Portland, especially the riverfront section on a Saturday or Sunday, and you’ll see a whole lot of folks who’ve lost it.

Not in the sense of “their minds”…although, for more than a few, that’s certainly debatable…

But in the sense of giving up, or losing the need to play the game I’ll call the “competition of selves.”

They’ve made the conscious choice to free themselves from participation in that full-contact and very bloody sport. Which, by the way, is a choice we’re all liberated to make.

But then there is the flip side of freedom. And I can see that more than a few are losing their freedom to freedom.

Once one steps away from the competition of selves, you immediately become conscious of an obligation. That is, the obligation to use the fact of your consciousness to enhance life…conscious life.

We don’t really sacrifice ourselves for material lacking in consciousness.

Do we?

OK, yes we have tree huggers, and those who want to save our oceans, not so much for the inanimate material of those unconscious things that take up space in our universe,…

but because they play a vital role in supporting and enhancing the life of conscious beings.

Without trees, minerals, the air and ocean, we, and other conscious beings, cannot exist.

But it’s hard to find the time, or feel the need, for impact when you’re fully engaged in the competition of selves.

The freedom endowed by no longer competing can be abused, or not impact-fully used. And I sense that’s occurring in Portland to some degree.

Folks needlessly shackling themselves once again…giving away their freedom to drugs and addictions that render them of little use to the good of the common consciousness.

In other words, it’s hard to live a life of impact when your completely wasted most of the time.

So, while I am becoming enamored with Portland and its freedom loving inhabitants…

My perception of a prevalent abuse of that freedom is something to be concerned about.

But, hey, I’ve only been here a couple of days.

And it definitely seems like a super cool place to hang one’s hat for a while.

The Portland Twinkles

October 18, 2014 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

OK, I’ve begun to notice something about these Portlanders…

they seem, for the most part, to have twinkles in their eyes.

I was walking down the street this morning in search of somewhere to breakfast that had the “tres B’s”, as we like to say in Costa Rica…

that is, bueno, bonito y barato (or, good, pretty and cheap).

Along the way I encountered a young girl, riding a skateboard and draped in a rather ornate quilt.

There was another person walking ahead of me, a female. And when the young girl passed she stopped and asked for something…I assume money.

“I don’t give money for meth!”, was the harsh reply.

The young girl shot back with a few choice words and then off she went.

It was bizarre.

I mean, I’ve seen my share of panhandlers…we have them in Costa Rica and I’m aware that they do exist in all large cities…

but skateboarding while draped in an ornate quilt?

Perhaps, only in Portland.

I’ve never seen the show Portlandia. My daughter tells me I must. Apparently it’s a parody of the outlandish behavior that this town has become famous for.

OK, starting to understand all that.

As I write this, sitting in the hostel, someone is singing at the top of their lungs.

Thankfully she has a relatively nice voice…the Portland twinkles.

I walked down the street earlier this evening to a place I was told had some good and cheap eating establishments. I passed a very large guy with long stringy hair. One could’ve easily mistaken him, with his immense size and downbeat demeanour, for an unmasked luchador of the World Wrestling Federation.

He looked up and asked me nonchalantly, “hey man, can you spare some change?” I instinctively gave him the little I had.

When I walked back in the other direction, I got precisely the same, “hey man, can you spare some change?”

“But, I already gave”, I replied. “Oh yea man, thanks!”

Once again, the Portland twinkles.

I’ve long had a bit of the twinkle myself. I mean it’s not the kind that buys me wide berths from passers by on the sidewalk…

but it does make people wonder, especially members of my family who think I’m completely and utterly nuts (like my mom).

In preparation for my trip I did some research, including a YouTube video that asked random people on the streets of downtown Portland why outsiders might think their town is, well, weird.

I especially liked the answer of one young pierced and tattooed hipster….

“You wanna know why Portland is weird, man…because of ME, that’s why!”

A tad egoistical, but he just might be right…that is, because of him and a lot of other free spirited twinklers like him.

Now, you might think all this weirdness would dissuade me from repatriating to a place like Portland…

Well, speaking of weird, have you been to San Jose, Costa Rica?

No, on the contrary, it’s the weirdness that draws me.

Because a place inhabited with folks without those glorious twinkles, is a place too full of loathing, and not nearly enough losing…

Remember, as my last post alluded, we must lose it, in order to find it…

and right now, I’m looking.

I believe the vast majority of Portlanders are as well.

In that sense, they’re “my kind of people.”

Archives for October 2014

Connect with RM