‘Booked’ on the yellow brick road

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The great difficulty we have in getting issues across to others, is others’ unwillingness to listen - there’s none so deaf, etc ... but with this sort of ‘deaf’ there’s danger. By ignoring important clues we never find answers; by ignoring issues, we damage both ourselves and vast numbers of animals.

            Because people’s resistance is so strong, when we try to talk to them (about all this) they virtually tell us to mind our own business. Tell us we can’t barge our way into their lives. And they’re right, we can’t. We often have to bite our lip, for fear of being seen as evangelists. Yes, we can inform and communicate, but not use force, which includes shame and guilt and disapproval. Everyone has the right NOT to listen. And that’s what happens when the person you’re talking to has obviously tuned out. They’re not at home. So, if they aren’t listening NOTHING we do can get them to come in closer without, at the same time, pushing them further away.

            We have to be like a book.

            The book sits there, waiting to be read or ignored. It doesn’t pressure anyone to read it. And yet, here it is, ready to be read. If we vegans are a book, the one idea we present is a picture of our fellow humans, moving towards their own innate peaceful natures.

            Like a book, we should be laid aside when enough has been read for one day. No one’s forcing anybody to read the book, no one’s forcing anyone to listen. The book is passive, just as the future is. If it gets the chance to open its pages to us, it’s on the basis that it is always ready for us if we are ready for it.

            The most valuable element in the peaceful transition, from animal-dependency to ‘going vegan’, is our wanting to. It’s our own decision to pull the book off the shelf and open it. Once that decision has been made we can let the book do the rest.

            And then we’re on the yellow brick road. We follow it. The further we follow it the more we build it.