Promoting vegan

75:

This is what I wanted to do: establish a vegan lifestyle, and when that was all  in place I wanted to get political. I was urgent to speed things up on the Animal Rights front. I wanted to start a small revolution in my own corner of the world and then see it spread. I wanted to go from a wannabe-vegan to vegan-warrior, ready to take on the world. And yet ... this isn’t reality, is it?       

            However passionate I am, I should bear in mind that I’m not a seasoned politician with a tough exterior, ready to rip into adversaries. I’m just an ordinary person who may be talking to other ordinary people. And what of my ‘adversaries’? I mustn’t forget they’re sensitive free-willed beings too. They will decide things for themselves, no matter what I say or how forcibly I say it. Once I start actively advocating Animal Rights, it’s hard for me not to sound pushy about it. It’s easy for me to forget that people can simply walk away from me.

            However good I think our ‘vegan’ idea is, it can’t be forced onto people. Any uninvited contributions will seem like intrusions, even attacks. And if I aim to push my way into peoples’ private space, when I say to them, as if asking an innocent question, “You don’t still eat meat do you?”, I’m likely to get a rude shock. Once my view is ‘fired’ at people (and they feel suitably uncomfortable) they’re put off. And what is worse, they might even swear off the idea for ever, and I obviously don’t want that.