Energy maximisation

Maybe as vegans we are convinced about our arguments concerning animal slavery but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can take on the task of convincing others, especially since such David and Goliath odds are stacked against us.

So what do we do? We can fret. We can feel our ineffectiveness. We can lose motivation, feel tired, get depressed, etc. We can try to steal energy from our day to day commitments and use it for ‘activism’ but then something suffers in our own life, relationships become stretched, there’s never enough time to do anything well. We can be torn between doing more for animal rights and spending less time with the family or family comes first …
The original idea that inspired us eventually makes a call on our energy and puts pressure on our other commitments. Even keeping up our vegan diet or vegan lifestyle demands extra energy. In other words vegans take on extra responsibilities and for these they need emotional energy fed by reading inspiring books or visiting places where they handle animals, doing yoga, whatever it is that fires us up and keeps us passionate. Wherever we find the energy there’s this impulse to be going on with the work in hand, despite all the pressures slowing us down.
If we let our personal life suffer in any way we know things will go wrong all round, so it’s a matter of getting the energy balance right. We know the cause is important but spending a lot of energy on it? How do we find that energy? Certainly vegan food is high powered stuff, we aren’t slowed by stodge. And the significance of the issues themselves helps to boost energy. But burn-out amongst animal activists is a reality.
So if energy is a problem it may be our attitude to energy itself that needs to be looked at. Maybe we should consider energy not like a finite resource, like how much petrol we have in the tank, but a self perpetuating force, as if a certain type of energy once released acts to generate more energy; a type of energy that expands the more it is expended. Let’s say that animal rights activities can give us this sort of impetus. We know it works that way with acts of kindness, where there’s a big investment and a beneficial feeling about it. We’re often surprised by how little depletion takes place when we’re giving our all to something we feel passionate about. It defies logic - the more used, the more replaced, but it may be that …
… As soon as we begin to let go of self interest and start to think, in this case about the care of animals, the stronger we feel. Doing the right thing, generating energy - could it be that simple? Could it be that when energy is released for the ‘greater-good’ that we make energy, and set off a chain reaction? When we serve it, it serves us? Could it be that when we begin to take an interest in a forest, an animal, a human, when we start advocating for them and not for ourselves, that the energy to do it seems to appear from nowhere? And does the opposite happen, where self-first drains energy? More greed, more need? If so, it puts a new spin on things. However hard pressed we are with our personal lives it may be that we will always still have time and energy for a cause.