Don’t get too near to the Mexican Stand-off

The nutritional side of plant-based diets has been elevated to respectability by research and books written. Eminent authorities now give their tick of approval to plant-based food regimes. The nutrition side of things is no longer a worry. Indeed the nutrition of vegan diets is said to be highly beneficial … but that’s not to get into here … except that for those of us who are long-time vegans, any concerns we might have had about safety have vanished long ago. For beginners that assurance has to be established. When nothing much might be known about a vegan diet it might seem like a frightening prospect, taking on the whole shebang - being open to Animal Rights issues and then moving to a vegan diet in consequence.
Like a reformed smoker, a vegan, once vegan, forgets how he or she felt ‘before’, how she/he had been so often drawn to their favourite (animal) foods and fashionable shoes, and now, as vegans, wanting something quite different.
An established vegan wants to feel ‘clean’ (like the ex-smoker wants clean lungs). If we can ‘clean out’ animal foods we may feel pretty righteous. We may like boasting about it. We may turn this cleansed-feeling into our ‘reason to be’. But if that gets to be too big a part of our identity don’t we start to seem narrow? As if we’ve only got one interest? It’s all a-okay of course if that steers clear of judgemental talk (our ‘reason we boycott’ turning into judging ‘all people who don’t boycott’) ... if we can simply not stray into being judgemental of the ‘meat heads’, but it’s often not the case. We do (all good clean fun) deride people for being ‘crazy’ (for eating crazy food) and we seem to have a need to do that ... because we’re as frustrated as hell that no one’s listening to us or agreeing about animals. We’re frustrated because we have no power to change anything ... so then ... we have to let it out. We figuratively climb onto the roof tops and shout to those below, “look around you”, “See what you are doing”. Ah, but no joy – there are no rooftops to shout from and no one takes any notice. Even if we were that vocal, our voices will always fall on deaf ears. Free people won’t “look around” at anything, especially if they’re ordered to. It’s always going to be a Mexican standoff - whatever we feel about them they’ll as surely feel about us. The bottom line here is about how we come across. It all depends on us taking the initiative, so that we aren’t obvious.