Energy maximisation

Maybe as vegans we are convinced about our arguments concerning animal slavery but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be a breeze convincing others. The odds are stacked against us. It all becomes energy-draining when there’s no apparent progress. So what do we do to prevent a collapse of our own vital energy? Usually we fret, worry about being ineffective, lose motivation, feel tired, depressed, etc. In an attempt to restore energy we steal it from our day to day commitments until something suffers in our private life, relationships become stretched, projects are neglected, we don’t do things well and we are torn between our commitments. The more we do for animal rights the less time we spend with family and friends.
The original idea that inspired us eventually makes too heavy 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 supplies of emotional energy and energy of every type. What helps to build energy more than anything is inspiring books or watching those DVDs about modern day methods of animal husbandry or going and seeing for ourselves how they handle animals. Whatever fires us up and keeps us passionate, wherever we find the impulse to be dealing with the issues, this is what keeps us going, with the work in hand.
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 how do we find the energy we need for it without compromising home life? Certainly vegan food is high powered stuff, plenty of energy there, and unlike most other people we aren’t slowed down by eating stodge. As well, the significance of the issues themselves help boosts energy. But burn-out is never far away. So, how do we keep up a high energy profile? supply?
If energy is a problem it may be our attitude to energy itself needs looking at. Maybe we should consider energy not like a finite resource, like the amount of petrol we have left in the tank, but a self perpetuating process, 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. We hope that animal rights activities can give us energy in much the same way as, say, acts of kindness often do, where we get a beneficial feeling about it and are often surprised by how little energy depletion takes place when we’re giving out or we’re feeling passionate about something. It’s a contradiction of the laws of physics, this energy. It defies logic. But it may be true that - the more we use, the more it is replaced.
By letting go of self interest and starting to think about others’ interests instead, the switch-over occurs. In the case of caring about animals, defending their interests, we draw energy from involvement -doing the right thing leads to generating energy for ourselves. Could it be that simple? Could it be that when energy is released for the ‘greater-good’ that we start a chain reaction? 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, the energy seems to appear from nowhere?
Does the opposite happen, where self-interest drains energy? More greed, more need? If so, it puts a whole new spin on things, in that however hard pressed we are with our personal lives it may be that we’ll always have time and energy for a cause because the cause generates energy.