Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

1864

Edited by CJ Tointon

Have you ever tried to change habit patterns? Had a new idea and tried to put it into practice, only to realise the idea comes with strings attached? Weighing the pros and cons, we might be reluctant to change when it's something we've been doing all our lives. Change brings fear. We start to think: "Why have I only just had this idea?" "Perhaps it's not a very good idea after all."

Maybe the new idea is to consider altering what we eat - for ethical reasons. Ethics might not have been associated with our food before. Maybe we've never met anyone who wasn't eating the same food as us. Maybe we've never had any conversations with people questioning food from animals, or that not using this sort of food is relevant to life quality. Perhaps the reason why we've never had this idea before is that we've never had occasion to think of these 'food' animals as sentient beings. The cow, chicken or pig on some farm, a fish in the sea - what are they to us? We don't communicate or connect with them.  We think they're all just the fruit of some food tree. An apple falls and we take it.

We accept animal-based foods as 'normal'; just as we accept having cars to transport us or schools to educate our kids. It's part of our present-day human society. Just as it is 'normal' to have 'pets' in our homes. These animals (usually dogs or cats) are docile, friendly companions. A wild, undomesticated animal in our home would be impossible to control. When it comes to animals, there's a dividing line between the civilised and uncivilised. We are brought up to believe that pigs and chickens are for eating and cows are for eating and milking. They are only relevant to us as part of a food chain. Having responsibility for or association with these 'uncivilised creatures' is a long stretch for the imagination.

However, most of us have enough anthropomorphic imagination to sympathise with animals. We know that animals are suffering on farms to such an extent that it is plausible to believe they're experiencing something akin to what humans would feel when undergoing prolonged deprivation in an incarcerated state. This sympathy for them can develop into empathy and this is the key difference between the sensitivity of vegans and the insensitivity of omnivores. Somehow, we vegans are blessed (or cursed) with a sensitivity so strong that we have no alternative but to make radical alterations to our lifestyle and diets - for ethical reasons.

There's one pleasure nearly everyone knows - the warmth and comfort of having a heated, pressurised water supply. Who hasn't stood under a warm shower and felt the pleasure of it? By turning on the tap we experience a no-shock transition from being cold and uncomfortable to being warm and comfortable. But there comes a time when the tap has to be turned off. The water stops and we feel the outside world beckoning - sometimes not such a comfortable pleasure. We probably wouldn't turn off the tap at all, if we didn't have to grapple with daily reality to continue our purpose of working for a better future - which we ourselves may not even be a part of. And if reincarnation is plausible to you, a future we are going to be part of. For better or worse, maybe we are so much the products of 'normal' living that some important things slip under our radar. 

Our primary concern used to be for our immediate connections - family or the people of our village. These people were our whole world. Today it's much broader. We have a connection to and an empathy with a much wider family. As our consciousness has developed, so too has our understanding of what's involved in relationships. We may have trouble with our spouses and children, but they still remain our chief concern. Less so are those living on the outside. 

To view strangers and animals (even things) as worthy of our greater consideration, would probably mean making substantial attitude changes which we might regard as almost impossible. And that's the funny thing. We magnify out of all proportion the difficulties involved with such changes because we try to second-guess what it would feel like for us. But those of us who have experienced change (either voluntarily or by force of circumstance) are accustomed to taking on the new. We discover that our fears were groundless and that changes of this order don't stop us being in control of our lives. In fact, daring to move away from convention might prove to be an exciting adventure rather than a punishment.

Omnivores and vegans alike are locked into convention in one important way - an attachment to food. It's a big part of our daily lives. Whether we're eating it, shopping for it, or earning money to pay for it, food is of paramount interest to all of us. We have to have a very good reason to change what we like to eat. The motivation for making (or not making) this particular change is strong in some of us and weak in others. Hence some people become vegan and some remain unchanged.