Imagination polishing the mirror

BLOGS INTERMITANT DURING MAY AS I'M OVERSEAS AND WITHOUT A CONNECTION

For those with imagination (who are also attracted to ‘isms’) vegan-ism isn’t a bad ‘ism’ to have. But we have to face both what is tempting and what is daunting about it. It’s no good pretending that it’s a bed of roses. There’s a perception out there, of veganism, in current thinking - it’s a mixture of pleasure and non-pleasure.
Most of us don’t ‘do’ unpleasant, not readily anyway. We may be motivated, but not that motivated. There are plenty of isms today and most of them are famous for their punishing (we see punishment as the all-pupose cleanser!) But this ‘ism’ has some invaluable saving graces. You have to weigh the pros and cons here, to get the best deal.
The main thing about veganism is that there’s consistency in it. Imagine the persistence a vegan uses. All that gives it a certain stability, but ultimately its optimism. It gives us achievable hope. It’s like seeing a golden future, and if we glimpse it, why walk away from it. It may seem strange but curiosity alone would prompt us to poke it, to see if it’s alive? And if so, what then?
Here we find this idea, lying at the side of the road. It seems frightening maybe, but if we poke it and it moves and we stay with it … and then move into a period of our lives where we are trialling and testing it, then you can guarantee something of it passes into us.
As soon as we start to identify with the idea, it becomes a part of us, and then like a stage-struck kid, we want to hit the boards. Something we get ‘from’ it we can’t help showing off. NOT to boast about it but to attempt to unlock people’s perceptions of it.
In the doing and the showing we can’t help being affected, and if all this starts to look like smugness, we have to work hard to make sure it DOESN’T. But then, come what may. Then, what begins to shine, from our simple daily routines, becomes apparent. ‘It’ shows. If we ‘GO VEGAN’ it gets noticed because it simply shines. And it comes out in the way we start to live and talk and think.