Culture Shock: Revolutions

You had to know that this one was coming at some point after I’ve written my peace in Culture Shock:Reloaded

As usual, I never come in at 100% on Monday mornings. Yesterday was cool though. Let’s see, I managed to ‘forget’ about a 9:00 a.m. responsibility because I neglected to put it on Outlook (probably because I was pre-occupied by thoughts of the weekend). The ‘Oh Shit’ hit me at about 11:00 a.m. and I promptly ran downstairs to R.N. to get my picture taken and receive my two new ‘certification’ badges (great… some more Jones around my neck).

Rosa was mad cool though. After scolding me for not being there 2 hours ago, she told me that she knew people forget things scheduled for first thing Monday morning, so she went ahead and left all the equipment out. We went through the usual name jokes and giggles and it was picture time.

Picture One: Rosa was asking me a question, and snapped the picture in the middle of my response. It was a devastating open-mouthed picture and it looked like I was sticking my tongue out at her.
Picture Two: An improvement.

Since I was late, I felt bad being ‘picky’ about the picture … so I just rolled with it. So now, one of my two new ID’s has me sticking my tongue out ala Second grade. Nice.

Monday’s subsequent events have led me to classify Monday as REVOLUTION Monday. I just recall that everything about me, my thoughts and my actions was REVOLUTIONARY. I felt like I wanted to change the world, one thing at a time. Starting with my insurance company, all the way to disconnecting my cable service and I even looked into switching from being a Claritin person to an Allegra person.

I’m saddened that my idea of changing the world translates to “switching to Geico” or which allergy medicine I should use. Does this mean I’m selfish? I don’t think so; my optimist-pessimist meter runs on a case to case basis. For example, when it comes to issues pertaining to myself, my career, my family, I am very optimistic and extremely ambitious. When it comes to macro-issues pertaining to social good (such as world-hunger and war), I’m usually pessimistic and tend to tone it down and “get real.”

Get a load of this Industrial Designer in action:

What we are witnessing here is a sudden overwhelming collective on my aspirations of change and revolution. Why? Perhaps there’s some psychological/ subconscious domino-effect that caused me to be this way on Monday. Such an onslaught of desires would signify what we (medically) prefer to term Cognitive Compensatory Syndrome. Though totally unnecessary, the patient attempts to undertake ‘seemingly’ radical (yet simple and achievable) desires in one aspect to fulfill the unachievable shortcomings in another. Loon.

(Okay, I made up the CCS part … but it sounds legit).

Changing the world the admirable way, is indeed one of my (long, long term) goals/ dreams. I tried the whole “do your part” thing when I became a Vegan for about a week. It was such a let-down to realize how insignificant (and possibly counter-productive) “your part” really is. For example:

You buy Soy milk at Wal-Mart. Very few people buy that particular Soy Milk.
Your money is going to Wal-Mart to use for whatever they want as part of their gross ‘revenue.’ Inventory arguments aside (because not enough people buy that milk), Wal-Mart will end up spending that revenue on MORE of what’s profitable i.e. Steak, Dairy Milk and so on.

Since then, I have basically given up on ‘the little things’ and decided it was time to dream big. Sometimes bigger than I’ll probably get to achieve but it’s nice to imagine. Now, I would rather perform an act of kindness (like giving a homeless person some change) than boycott something or any type of radical activism. I know it reeks of short-term satisfaction/ fix … but it makes more sense.

If you’re not yet able to push a mountain, don’t be wasteful stroking it.

Viva La Resistance.

Note: Eventually, we're gonna run out of damn TOFU ... and then what are you going to do, huh?