No Impact Man

It’s been a long time coming. I walked into a bookstore last Sunday, fed up with the idea that I would let the library or the idea of sometime wandering to the library, dictate which books I’d be reading. Instead, I marched into the bookstore, browsed to my heart’s delight and finally settled on 3 books: “No Impact Man” by Colin Beavan, a graphic novel in Finnish translated as “Berlin: Smokey City” and a fiction novel called “Await your Reply.” It’s not Wednesday night and I’ve already breezed through the “No Impact Man,” save for a dozen pages, and I’m itching to share my thoughts… or contain them, or even organize them some how. That’s it, I need a place to organize my thoughts.

So here’s a quick premise for the book: Colin and his wife Michelle and their daughter Isabella and their dog Frankie all live in an NYC apartment in Greenwich Village. Colin feels guilty about the environment (you know, in general, as most people do, but without knowing too, too much about the details) and sets out to finally do something about it. He intentionally doesn’t plan too much but decides that over the course of a year, his family will live without having a harmful effect on the planet and live sustainably (which according to Word, is not a word). What I really enjoyed about the novel, other than the inspiration it provided its readers with, was the candor with which the book is narrated. Our author is no environmental guru. He does not know 101 ways to find, buy, cook and serve sustainable dinners for three. He isn’t an athlete who has spent years training for the most physically active year of his life. He is simply, one of us.

I hope I’m not breaking any copyright laws by quoting this passage from Colin Beavan’s “No Impact Man” (Piatkus, 2009) but it was my favourite, so I’d really like to share it:

“Dae Soen Sa Nim [a Korean monk who founded the school of Zen] decided that peace would come if all the religious leaders of the world got together and had a good human conversation. The way to do that, Dae Soen Sa Nim decided, was to have all the world’s religious leaders get into a hot tub together.
“ In order to get all the religious leaders into the same hot tub, Dae Soen Sa Nim thought ut was important that the invitation come from the Pope. He wanted the Pope to send out a letter that said, essentially, ‘Dear Religious Leader, How about we get into a hot tub and figure out how to attain world peace? Yours truly, the Pope.’
“So, without invitation, Dae Soen Sa Nim got on a plane, traveled to Rome, marched up to the gates of the Vatican, and asked to see the Pope. No, he told the guard, he did not have an appointment. The guard sent Dae Soen Sa Nim to see one of the priests. A day or two later, the priest sent him to see a bishop. A couple days after that, the bishop got him an appointment to see a cardinal.
“As the story goes, the cardinal in question did not see the value in Dae Soen Sa Nim’s hot tub approach, and there the effort died.
“But why this story gets told again and again in the Zen school is because of the sheer “just try” energy of Dae Soen Sa Nim’s approach. It suggest that instead of trying to save the world by sitting around figuring out the best course of action, we should just start trying to save the world. If we all just start trying from where we are, even if some of us fail, one of us or a couple of thousand of us will cross the finish line and get the job done.
“And if we don’t, we will inspire other thousands the start from where they are, just as the story of Dae Soen Sa Nim and the Pope has inspired many hundreds of his students to just try. Is one of those students succeeds, then Dae Soen Sa Nim’s stunt will have worked.”