I was sitting down for lunch yesterday in my favorite little cafe in Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica perusing La Nación. An article caught my eye that questioned whether richer nations should compensate poorer ones for the disastrous effects of global warming.

Hmm, I thought to myself…why not?

After all it is the rich nations that bear the lion’s share of producing the phenomenon that whips up a storm like Cyclone Haiyan (possibly the strongest storm ever to make landfall in recorded history) that devastates a relatively poor nation like the Philippines.

Okay, food for thought, but not the point of this post.

Revolutions need dictators…right? I mean Che had his Batista and the Arab Springers had their Mubarak, Gadhafi, and Abidene ben Ali. So, who or what does Revolutionary Misfit have as its dictator to depose?

Dictators produce pain and oppression and our dreaded dictator is no exception. Who is suffering from our dictator? Young adults who are disillusioned with the concept of the American Dream, or the middle-aged who are dissatisfied with the reality of it, both seeking a clarified sense of life’s purpose

…a new why.

And the specific pain and oppression being suffered? Lack of inspired purpose and a sense of helplessness against forces that are perpetuating that lack…the forces of greed and indifference.

The answer Revolutionary Misfit proposes is a life in which impact is the impetus…not accumulation. It is this lifestyle of accumulation that inspires storms like Haiyan to blow it all away. Problem is that a stupid storm doesn’t know where it is blowing. If enough of them accidentally or coincidentally blow in the right place…then we learn (at least in the short-term) the lesson that greed and indifference don’t serve us…the hard way.

I read a great quote this morning from the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott on writing. She describes writing in a way that resonated with me and could serve as the rallying cry for Revolutionary Misfits…

It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

Even though the storms will strike where they may…it doesn’t detract from the fact that we’re all in this boat together.

photo credit: EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection via Compfight cc