Motivation for peacemakers

Perhaps you are the sort of vegan who doesn’t want to speak about it. You may just want to be accepted for your views. If that were me I think my only demand would be to feel as though I was doing something to save the animals (by simply being vegan). But I wouldn’t be human, on top of this, if I didn’t want others to recognise me for what I stand for. “Hey, please notice I’m vegan”. Which makes vegans seem pretty desperate for recognition, but sometimes it’s not that at all. It’s something else. We don’t want others to agree (although great if they do!) and we certainly don’t want to be admired for being vegan. No. Just to recognise us as peace-makers. Now that’s reasonable enough isn’t it?
If we expect anything more from others than that, we know it might be a very hard ask. Peace makers aren’t fully understood and the effectiveness of what they stand for is doubted. We still live in a world where things get done by force and coercion. So let’s not be put off by heavy reactions from non-vegans. It’s not something to get surprised about. Nor something to go on (and on) about.
Usually people’s reactions to veganism are neither logical nor kind – nor for that matter unkind. There is often simply a "non-response". A signal to say: “What might be important for you is not important to me and not worth talking about or responding to”. So for peace-makers, the very thing which is wonderful and brave and future-making in our own lives is, to others, not even worth noticing. Hardly very encouraging for us!
If there happens to be no kudos for a peace-maker, where do we find our source of encouragement? Perhaps from within. We need to tap into our sense of caring (in this case for the animals as well as our caring for fellow humans) and tap into our imagination, our faith, or whatever it takes to replace the recognition we’re NOT getting from others. Beyond the rights and wrongs and injustice of all this, beyond the wobbly faith, the one true powerhouse of energy is seated in our own imagination. And that’s the point here. Maybe the catastrophe of our age is really nothing more than a crisis of "unimaginativeness". For most people imagination stops short over certain matters, particularly this one. Even vegans, we don’t tap into that energy source often enough and in consequence we continue to look outside of ourselves for motivation (in the form of recognition). We find it in short supply. We get angry about it. But it’s much worse for our omnivorous friends who are even more out of the habit of working things out for themselves. They do what others do. Perhaps they reason like this: “others eat animals so I eat animals. Others don’t question so I don’t question”. But by not questioning or by not using imagination, none of us can develop our creativity – and so, we miss out on the golden chance of pursuing altruistic aims. Vegans may lead the way but any one of us vegans still keep hitting our own motivational crisis points.