Doing without

For everyone, life’s hard enough but for vegans it’s harder, in one important way. We seem to bear almost the sole responsibility for persuading people of the wrongness of enslaving animals and the rightness of not using them at all. On one level that’s enlightening but on another it’s a nightmare, a pit within a pit. We have to deal with our own everyday-participations (in this society) but we're forced to lead a double life, being in it but not of it. We’re outsiders leading an almost schizophrenic existence. But at least we don’t have the food baggage most people carry, which eventually represents itself as extra bodyweight and ill health.
The omnivore’s mental conditioning traps them into habits which are perhaps reminders of childhood habits that are being maintained into adulthood. The most dangerous of these is our fondness for Nursery Teas. We like to use certain combinations of these (addictive) products from childhood, in the form of sweetened confections, cheesey concoctions and milky drinks, because they’re tempting and they do predictable things to our immediate mood. But they’ve lost their original impact as treats because they’re indulged in several times a day, every day. The habits of childish indulgence are joined by their big brother, the expensive centrepieces of our main meal plates, the primary (meat) foods. As dangerous as these food habits are their twin, in terms of expense and body damage, are on a par - the intoxicants, which are probably used to fuzz the conscience, in order to enjoy the eating experience more.
Animal foods (and ingredients) make for tasting-pleasure and stomach-filling satisfaction. They give us a ‘rich’ feeling. They appeal to the extremes of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, but they always ultimately impoverish. The addictiveness of these foods seem to deny us any chance of escape - because of them we seem to be umbilically held captive to the norms of our society.
Veganism takes us past that point. Usually we never look back to that world but look ahead to a world of slight daily discipline (boycotting). I say ‘slight’ because that’s how it seems to someone who does it and finds it (weirdly) easier-than-expected. The self discipline isn’t insignificant, make no mistake, but it’s made so much easier by realising the extent of our society’s weakness for oral pick-me-ups. And that becomes, as we get older, more determined. Our lives are redolent of “little habits”. To release them becomes harder and harder, especially when the alternatives seem uglier (veganism appears especially extreme and ugly). Perhaps that’s when the Big Lesson should take place, when we realise just how powerful perceptions and preconceptions can be. Veganism alters all of that in a flash. And how!
But “going vegan” isn’t quite that simple. Immediately when the brain tells us to “give it a go” we face a Catch 22, a paradox. Herbivore eating means a limited choice. In 2010 societies and markets are so heavily geared to the animal eaters’ interests that vegans have to make do without many convenient commodities. Just in that ‘limitation’ vegans lose one sort of energy - the boost we may get from any one of thousands of animal-based food products on the market. That’s their big selling point. By going vegan all of that product is off-limits. If they’re enjoyable at all then we, as vegans, don’t get to experience that. But out of this denial comes unexpected new energy we hadn’t realised we’d have access to.
That energy looks like the product of a self-disciplining. Again the weight of that each day seems ugly to the casual onlooker. It seems too ridiculously hard. But look at it this way: going vegan helps us pass certain shops. Nothing in a cake shop is clean of animal by-products ... so vegans don’t have any reason to go inside such a place, nor butchers nor McDonalds nor furriers. Then there are shops that sell some good stuff but reek of dead animal, like delicatessens, shoe shops, supermarkets and restaurants. People like me go into them but we shop quickly due to the horrible smells.
All this ‘doing-without’ might seem like a big sacrifice to omnivores but to vegans it’s a blessing in disguise. We can’t be tempted by the ‘delights’ of edible or wearable or useable animal products, so we can’t be tainted by them or, in the case of food items, made ill by them. And that’s the ultimate advantage. We don’t have to spend our latter years in the grip of ill-health, at least not from our previous years of indulging in second rate taste-trips.