Birth of a Vegan

This is in response to something I hear a lot - the common perception that you have to think killing animals is wrong to be a vegan or vegetarian. It's where I am now, but it's not how I started.

It's odd how one choice in life can have such a profound effect. Going vegan was the fourth best decision I've ever made, after marrying my husband and having my two kids.

I went from omnivore to vegan within a 1 month period of time. Even after that month, the idea of killing animals did not seem wrong to me. Torturing them was wrong, but killing them wasn't. I didn't see the quick ending of life as "harm." So in the beginning, going vegan was just a decision not to torture animals. For a brief time, I entertained the idea of eating only free range meats, eggs and dairy. But then I read up on it, and found out about the crock of marketspeak bullshit that the terms "free range" and "humane" were. (For more info, start here). The whole animal agricultural system was so terrible, that I wanted nothing more to do with any of it. I decided to remove myself from it completely.

From there, little by little I started to look at my choices in terms of how much harm I was doing. This was kind of new to me. I mean, I wasn't ever a mean person. I tried to be kind, but for some reason some areas of my life didn't fall under close scrutiny. Only stuff I did intentionally and consciously counted. Without really thinking, I denied responsibility for the rest.

Being vegan changed that. Once I discovered that I was responsible for any harm I caused, even if I didn't see it, and even if it wasn't intentional, something shifted. I scrutinized- if I bought a detergent with phosphates, I was responsible for any creatures that it sickened or killed, even if I never saw them. If I bought something at Wal Mart, I was helping to keep sweatshop workers enslaved to unsafe and inhumane jobs.

The food thing was just a gateway to totally re-examining my life in terms of how much it was in alignment with my values. My core value was not to hurt anything, and to help where I could. It's not really possible to truly live that ethic, since my car smushes bugs, the gas pollutes and purchasing food involves plastics and killing mice, snakes etc. But though I couldn't be perfect, I could do my best, which meant a lot of changes. Fortunately, my husband and I went hand-in-hand on this trip, because without his support it would have been very hard.

Little by little, killing anything fell under the category of "harm," even if it was a stupid animal like a chicken. It dawned on me that all creatures fight to the end to stay alive, so acting against that without a reason constituted harm, just as killing a dog is harm. I still had to eat, but plants don't have a nervous system and can't feel pain or suffer, so I'd have to settle for killing those instead of animals. Life lives by feeding on death and I couldn't change that.

I'm still working on things. My shift to disposable diapers goes against my ethics, but it frees up time. Am I being a hypocrite now, was I being a martyr before, or am I "balancing?" Normal dishwasher detergents work better than the environmental kind, so do normal laundry detergents. Composting is a pain in my ass. At the same time, we let slugs eat our plants in the front yard, and we have a hive of bees that has taken up residence in our backyard because we refuse to disturb them unless they hurt us. On Fridays, I drag the trash can around snails so as not to crush them and I'll chase my cat around the yard to save lizards that he tries to kill. We save stranded worms when it rains.

Some might say that I'm wasting my time. Some would even say it's bordering on mental illness to worry about the minutiae. Things die, and I should accept my role in causing death. I shouldn't think too much about it or I'll make myself crazy (not a long trip, I assure you).

But for me, the close examination of my life has had huge rewards, though they come at an emotional cost. I haven't yet come to a place where I am at peace with the suffering in the world. It tears at my heart to know about suffering, human and animal, and to think about it every day. And I do think of it every day. Almost every night I think of how lucky I am to have a home and a bed. I get teary sometimes when I hold my kids because I know some mother somewhere is watching her child die of starvation or some preventable disease, and that it's just dumb luck that we were born in this country. I have to try to not to think about the meat counter at the market, because though the customers don't know, I have an idea of what happened to those animals. Sometimes it's like walking around without skin on - everything gets in and I have to play mental tricks to not get upset.

Sometimes I feel like I might really be crazy to give a shit about these things. No one else does, so it's not "normal." Sometimes, every so often, I have what I personally nickname my "vegan period." And for a week or so I get really angry and I feel so furious that people cause harm without thinking - all the while knowing that I did exactly the same thing for a long time. I wish suffering on all those who cause suffering, through war or corporate greed or supporting animal agriculture, and I know that these thoughts are poisonous. But they come anyway, because I can't help but empathize with the victims, which makes it doubly hard to empathize with those who cause the pain.

With time, maybe I'll find a way to be at peace with it. I'm trying hard not to be consumed by anger, and at the same time, not to rationalize or become apathetic as a defense mechanism.

But for all that, I can't go back. From my description, the whole thing sounds like some kind of miserable self-torture. But it's more like going from child to adult - when you realize that the world you thought was there is really something else entirely. You have to pay bills, but you also get to sleep on the lawn and wake up with dewy skin. Brutality is magnified, but so is kindness, until acts of compassion or bravery, like the ones we hear about during disasters, become all the more wondrous and poignant. Small insect lives become significant. Food tastes better. Ugly things, like worms and turkeys, take on some kind of beautiful radiance. I no longer have to mentally distance myself from the "food" animals, so I see them with new eyes. It's weird, but cool.