#2: Wulfe B.

I never take the first parking spot because there’s people who may need it. I’ve lived that experience. I always park a few spaces back because I never know who might need it. I don’t do that because I’m going to go to hell or become a slug, I do that because it’s the right thing to do.

Wulfe on morals

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STORIES

What are you most proud of?

Where I am right now in life. I spent my whole life wanting to get out of Alaska and it’s just over a year and I made that happen.

What is your favorite story to tell?

When I moved down to Florida, I came down here with no plans. I had my car and all my junk in my car. I came here, no job lined up, no apartment. I got hired on the spot first day I was here. I worked 4 or 5 days and then I fractured my leg. I was out of work for a month and a half.

In that month and a half, I was kind of wild. I ran out of money for an airbnb or hotel so I started living in a state park in the woods, in a tent. In the time I was doing that, I was very poor and I was basically doing doordash to survive and sometimes I was eating doordash orders because I could not afford to eat. Eventually, what happened is the state park authorities told me I couldn’t stay here anymore and I essentially disregarded them because a couple of days after they told me that I was going up to Georgia to stay for a week. So I did that, came back, set my camp right back in the state park. I was probably there for 3 weeks. One day, I had a feeling that something was going to happen and I just knew it. I remember driving down a very narrow road and I saw two trucks that was parked off to the side with their lighs off. As soon as I drove by them I was like “Today’s the day”. Went to my tent, got in, cracked open a beer and started drinking and next thing I knew there was a bunch of lights in front of my tent and there was a guy. I came out, he had an AR-15, assault rifle, body armor. He was ready. He told me I couldn’t stay there anymore and he gave me a citation for the beer bottles in my tent. That was also the day I learned that you can’t have glass bottles in any water lays in the state of Florida and I was banned from the state park for an entire year. (audio)

What mistake do you keep making over and over again?

I’m bad with money. I had to stop myself from buying an $88 dollar cooler today. I wanted that cooler but I was like ‘I don’t need it though’. It was a really nice cooler. You can keep your ice cool in there for a week if it was in a cool spot. It is the best cooler I’ve ever seen in my life, truly a marvel of human ingenuity and I just had to stop myself from getting it.

What is something people misunderstand about you?

I think when I meet a lot of people, I think they get this idea that I’m this awkward introvert and I’ve heard that a few times from people. That isn’t so much the case. It takes time for me to want to open up to people and that’s more of what it’s about. I’m not really an anxious or awkward person. It’s just that I’m not going to open myself up to somebody I’ve just met. Additionally, a lot of people don’t think that I read or anything like that. I think people see me more as a partier than someone who is interested in intellectual pursuits.

When was the last time you cried?

Does tears of joy count? The first trip I took when I got my car in Georgia. When I got on the interstate, I definitely had tears of joy, having that freedom that I’ve never had before. Getting on I-75 north going to Atlanta. Something I always dreamed about doing and I was doing it.

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PERSPECTIVES AND IDEAS

What is your deepest fear?

Anything that denies me the right to be a free man.

How would you define success for you?

Totally financially independent. I make enough money that I don’t worry about money, I don’t worry about bills. I always have money to do the things I want to do. I can travel. If I want to go to Cambodia, I can go to Cambodia. If I want to go to North Korea, I can go to North Korea, which is totally a place I want to visit.

What do you religiously or spiritually believe in?

I consider myself a spiritual person, definitely. I believe there’s something more. By no means am I agnostic or an atheist. I do believe in a higher power. 100%. What that higher power is, I don’t know. I think that every religion is trying to discover that higher power. Some, arguably have to be more correct than others. I don’t know which one is correct, nobody does, really. But definitely, I’ve delved into a lot of different spiritual ideas, reincarnation, ancient philosophy. I don’t consider myself a Christian but I am knowledgable about Christianity and I am knowledgable about the belief system and I think that there is something really powerful and true about it. As far as an absolute truth, I don’t know.

Do you ever feel stuck in life?

We all do sometimes. Much less so than I used to be. When I lived in Alaska, I always felt stuck but not so much anymore.

How has your perspective on the world change over time?

When I was a teenager, I was rather nihilistic. I had a negative view of society and the world. I still do in some ways but that’s another discussion. I used to be a lot more cynical. I used to be one of the people I’ve actually come to despise in a lot of ways, the people that essentially believes in whatever the mainstream is and don’t think for themselves. I used to reject different ideas. I would say that is some of the biggest growth I’ve had. A total 180. I’m very open to alternative ideas. Not all, some are very kooky.

What do you think is the biggest problem in our society?

I would say that one of the largest is our rejection of the Natural world. Half the world’s population lives and dies in cities. The other night I was acknowledging that even in Pensacola, it’s not a very big city, you can’t see the stars at night. There’s no connection with the natural world. It’s rejected, even academically. We’ve created a civilization that destroys and supercedes the natural world. It’s just a byproduct, it doesn’t matter anymore. We have no issue destroying our world because it’s profitable. In our society, what matters more than the world is making a profit.

I don’t want to identify myself as anti capitalist because there are a lot of negative connotations with that. I think capitalism ultimately isn’t really a good thing anymore. It got us to where we are but where we are isn’t really a good thing. We have the most advanced civilization in human history but we are also the most unhappy people. We are completely disconnected with ourselves, with society, each other, with the natural world.

Nothing short of a cataclysmic fall of modern civilization is going to show people the evils of our ways because that’s not how people think. People will continue to do things that we’ve always done. We’re not going to wake up one day and change. The evidence is there but people choose to ignore it and until it threatens their livelihood and their way of life, they’re not going to change.

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Wulfe’S BITS OF WISDOM

What do you think happens after death?

I don’t think anybody knows. I think (reincarnation) is a strong possibility. I tend to believe in the cyclical view of the Universe. It’s not a straight line that ends here and ends here. I think of like in the Universe as a circle. What has happened will come again as it always has.

What do you think people should stop or start doing specifically to make the world a better place?

Disconnect. Disconnect from electronics, the media. Disconnect from the things that has bombarded every second of every day of our lives, 24/7. We need to become more in tune with ourselves, we need to value the wisdom of ancient people. As long as we’re only in tune with modernity, I don’t think we will be wise.

On Morals:

I don’t not do things because I think that I’m going to become a crackhead in my next life or a cockroach but because I think that they’re the right things to do. Like putting the shopping carts back, I don’t do that because I think that I’m going to be a terrible person my next life. I just do it because I think it’s the right thing to do. I never take the first parking spot because there’s people who may need it. I’ve lived that experience where there were no handicap parking and I actually needed a parking spot up front and I couldn’t get one. I always park a few spaces back because I never know who might need it. I don’t do that because I’m gonna go to hell or become a slug, I do that because I think it’s the right thing to do.

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REFLECTIONS

I met Wulfe while working at a beach restaurant over the summer. He was there my first week and then he was gone. I thought he had quit and never really thought much about it after. A month and a half later they said he was coming back but because he had a cast, he was going to be doing minimal work.

In the setting I knew Wulfe at, there was rarely an opportunity for converstations that weren’t ‘Hey you have this table’ or ‘How many more people on the wait?’. I knew him as a coworker and never connected to his actual personhood outside of that. We spoke a lot about how disconnection is detrimental to us. We are constantly surrounded by people but how many of them do we actually ever feel connected with? Most often than not, we just pass by them on the street or are acquainted by work. That disconnection affects how we interact with each other and the world.

The first time Wulfe ever told us the state park story, we had just gotten off a 12 hour shift. A small group of good friends, exhausted from a long shift, drinking a few beers before we had to do it all over again the next day. I remember we were all laughing when he was telling it and thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Definitely the beers giggling. He told us that he was living out of his car and initially, we all reacted with empathy. At first it was kind of ‘aw I’m so sorry’ but after a while, you could tell that Wulfe was the kind of guy that chooses to see the best in any situation. So it was easy to laugh with him about being kicked out of a state park. Hearing him speak about it during the interview allowed me to reflect on how shitty the situation actually was.

In addition, it made me reflect on how people should define what a “good life” is for themselves and be aware of that compared to what a “good life” is defined by society. Many of us immediately reacted with empathy when we learned that Wulfe was living out of his car at the time because so many of the stories you hear of people in those situations are often sad. Our reactions of empathy is projected towards those people. For Wulfe, it was freedom and a part of life. I had to learn to take a step back and omit my judgement and see things from his perspective in order to understand.

I thought it was interesting to hear Wulfe talk about the shopping cart and parking dilemma. ‘The Shopping Cart Theory’ was a meme that went viral sometime last year. It basically states that returning the shopping cart is the ultimate test to see if someone is a self-governing person. There are little things in life where morals are defined by the thought of respect to another person. I’ve never thought of parking a few spaces back and Wulfe stated that he did that due to his own experiences when he fractured his leg. I’ve never been in a situation like that so it was something I’ve never thought of.

Ever since our interview, I’ve started taking parking spots further in the back. Little steps of kindness to make the world even just a little bit nicer.

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Some of the answers above have been praphrased very slightly to remove excessive rambles in order to provide a smoother read. If you’d like to hear their unedited responses, you can do so by listening to their audio tapes linked at the end of each answers. If you’d like to listen to all audio tapes, you can do so by clicking here. Links will redirect you to instagram reels in another tab.