Feeling good

(*Today's blog is twice as long as usual)

By avoiding animal products, by becoming vegan, we feel good too. Vegans usually look good because the diet is so beneficial to the body. But we’ve also crossed a personal Rubicon which makes us feel good, and probably that’s how every vegan feels about their decision – we have good feeling about how the stomach feels and feel good now we’re somehow less dense and perhaps mentally sharper.
This question of good, what is it? Is it self-satisfaction or altruistic intention? Is there an honourableness in empathising and not simply being ‘in it’ for ourselves alone. Or maybe it’s the feeling we get when we’re actively involved in non-violence, or the smooth feeling we get driving a car by getting into the appropriate gear to go up a hill. If our machinery is working we’ll be empathetic and we’ll want to be “nice”. But is that just being the nice guy?
The struggle between image and genuine feeling - if I want to be seen as the nice guy I’ll behave publicly differently to the way I am at home, nice outwardly but a nasty piece of work in my own eyes. Perhaps that distinction doesn’t matter as much as we might think. It may be the split which exists in all of us, questioning our own integrity, undermining our confidence in the nice guy within. Perhaps being good, doing good, being nice is about self enjoyment as much as it is about ‘being there’ for others. And it’s something we just are when we’re having fun or, more seriously, experiencing that ‘honourable-self’ feeling. It’s our own honourableness that we like most about ourselves. And we use it all the time to heal and put spark into our relationships and to help save the planet. Honourable people want to see the best in others, and often in wanting something honourable we create the very reality in our mind for it to become manifest.
This one is easy to screw up. We have certain ‘opposite behaviours’ that are the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. Top of the list is looking around for people’s bad points and wanting to be in judgement of them. It‘s enjoying the buzz of condemning.
Take a meat eater. It’s easy for us to condemn them and, at the same time, expiate our own guilts. But by not judging a person for something they do (that we don’t approve of) we make a strike for the greater good. That would mean not feeling angry at ‘it all’, no boasting about any progress we think we’ve made, being nice all round and being anonymous about it. That’s more or less what most of us do anyway in most of our interactions but we often don’t know we do it. But vegans are upping the ante here. We’re advocating a more comprehensive, all- encompassing, nothing-excluded altruism. In a nutshell it’s about being good beyond the confines of human family and human friends. But this sort of altruism isn’t for the feint hearted. It’s as hard not to judge as it is to persuade our mates to try a vegan diet. This avoidance of being destructive and an urge to be working for the greater good is the sustaining force we need to confront the massive resistance.
It’s likely the results of animal work won’t bear fruit during our own lifetime and yet our own seeds need to be sown. Animals rights, for example, might not come about until many of us are dead, but if we want to lay the foundation stones today, it’s not only essential that we do it right now, but to know that if we act now we’ll be building a better future … and in acting for the greater good we’re also acting to ‘feel-good’ about ourselves.
If we actually don’t care about what’s ahead ‘after we’re gone’, (“I won’t be around to see it”), you’d do well to stop reading this blog. You’ll have neither an interest in long term planning nor any interest in the concept of altruism, because it will be meaningless. You might still want a good self-image and for that you might need to seem good. But just seeming good doesn’t guarantee you’re going to like yourself any better or be liked more by others, especially if you go around showing-off your ‘goodness’. No one likes boasting, whereas everyone likes people who come to be ‘genuine’.

The depth of our commitment (to being good) is tested when we aren’t being recognised for what we do. Perpetual anonymity would, for some, be enough to turn them off being good altogether. And I suppose there are some righteous vegans who’re like that when they boast. That insecurity (in all of us) may come from this fear that we’ll never see the results or never be rewarded for the part we play. We’ve all surely gone down that path or we’re on that path or yet have to go down that path, but at the end of it we’ll know our own level of ‘right-ness’ when taking the high moral ground with others. Genuineness avoids the mistaken suspicion others might have of us, that we could have hidden motives.