Good maintenance for the inanimate

346:

Many of my most treasured objects today are complex structures. Machines. And something special is involved in ‘owning’ one. Owning something suggests ‘caring’ for it – I’m automatically involved with its well-being as soon as I start to make use of it. I ‘care’ for my cat, care for my car. Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each highlight the risk of not attending to them - like the failure to maintain an aircraft ... and it all ending in catastrophe. But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs me something. The insurance industry encourages me to be parsimonious and indecisive, and profits accordingly (from my wobbling between ‘just-in-case’ & ‘it may never happen’). They offer me two choices: either I spend money and feel safe or I neglect my safety and save my money. That’s a nice dichotomy. Fear wins, scaring me into parting with my ‘hard-earned’ cash.
And so I get up each day, worrying and frowning, carrying a list of things to do, things to be maintained, and I feel ‘overwhelmed’ – all I hear is my groan at not being able to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there … safety, safety, safety … but it’s never ending. I spend my life searching for the best insurance ... which eventually led me to veganism.
At first, this was my first thought. It was my best insurance policy (even though later on it became so much more). The food almost guarantees bodily health and some vegans are extremely health conscious, respecting their bodies as temples. Not me. I follow not-the-most-intelligent vegan diet, but it serves me well enough, physically. It ensures a clear conscience (cruelty-free foods, etc); it’s cheaper to eat this way too and obviously I soon enough realised that it’s less environmentally damaging. Over the years I realised it was building in me (a bit) better-disciplined character and, most importantly, it serves as my rock. It makes me feel safe.
That’s what makes me care so much for it. For that particularly. Like a well maintained bike or aircraft, I feel safe enough using this diet. Coincidentally it opens up my compassion ... for the poor tortured animals. It lets me into the depths of understanding this empathy-centred, vegan-principled-philosophy on whose tracks I can run a good part of my life.