motivation source

Perhaps I’m the sort of vegan who doesn’t want to speak about it. I just want to be accepted for my views. Then my only demand would be to feel as though I was doing something (by simply being vegan) to save the animals. But I wouldn’t be human if, on top of this, I didn’t want others to recognise me for what I stand for. Not for others to agree with me or admire me, but just to recognise that this is my way of being a peace-maker. Now that’s reasonable enough isn’t it? But if we expect that from others, we know it might be a very hard ask. 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) and tap into our imagination, our faith, 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 only a crisis of "unimaginativeness". For vegans, we don’t tap into that energy source often enough and so we look outside of ourselves for motivation, find it in short supply and get angry about that.
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 motivation crisis points.