Resolve

72: 

The decision to ‘go vegan’ is the start to a whole lifestyle change. When I first latched onto this idea it was the biggest idea I’d come across. It said to me that I was heading towards becoming non-violent, animal friendly, green and therefore in the best position to help transform the world. As an ideal it’s pretty much indisputable! “Great”, I thought, but how will I keep it up? I knew that once I started something this big I must continue with it. If I gave up I’d hate myself.

            So what couldn’t I fail with? Certainly, I wanted to leave the violence of all that animal killing behind me, but how would I deal with all the food temptations and more particularly the violence of the society in which I was brought up?

As I was heading into all this the one thing I feared most was becoming overwhelmed by it all and backtracking. When I took on a vegan diet and threw out my leather shoes I was still inspired, but after a while I felt the loss of things. I could see that it was a good idea in theory, but was it really making me feel better? I had my doubts but not over principles, only practice. Would I be making a rod for my own back? Shouldn’t I toss the idea around and let it settle into my life, let my mates know what I was doing, make sure I was comfortable with it?

            What happened was that I stopped eating animal stuff. I found plant-based foods weren’t bad at all. Good in fact. That made me think, “So far so good”, and think well of myself. But I wanted more. And that’s when I hit a hurdle.

I wanted everyone to be supportive, and they weren’t. I faced social isolation. Being vegan was starting to feel like a burden. I even started to think my friends didn’t like me anymore. But that led me to think much more deeply about friendships and communication, and that in turn led me to see the importance of maintaining strong relationships. It got me thinking about non-violence, not just eating cruelty-free food but interacting gently with my non-vegan friends.

            So, I thought the diet change was going to be a big  problem, and it wasn’t (although to this day I do miss Mars Bars - I can still remember how they tasted and how the chocolate and caramel and toffee made for something special confection-wise). With a few new products in the cupboard and by using a few new recipes, I never looked back. I was so pleased that I didn’t miss animal-products much at all.

            My main worry was my resolve, whether it would fade once the novelty had worn off. Would I be able to give it a proper chance? I already knew people who’d gone half way and never progressed beyond that, as vegetarians. I couldn’t help thinking it was a great start. But why stop there? For my part, I would go in full bore. I would try to use sheer will-power.  I’d do just about anything to get to the ‘other side’.

            Some people are gradual diet changers, some sudden. But that’s just food. There are other issues to face, like being seen as going weird. True, I had stopped eating foods everyone else ate but I didn’t worry about that - but had I gone weird in another way? Could there be something disturbing in me - that by going vegan was I setting myself above others? Was I positioning myself to lay value judgements on people. Was I doing this to make me feel superior and protect myself from being judged. Was I doing this to prevent my own self-judgement?

            As a vegan I was starting to experience all these changes, on many levels. And something else was happening – a tension was growing between my passion and my impatience. I wanted to drop all the addictions straight away so that I could become a true animal advocate. Or did I mean an evangelist for veganism?

I mention all this as a lead up to some important associated problems, concerning advocacy and getting others to come on board. I wanted to lie and say, “It’s worth it. Go vegan. It’s not that hard at all”. But in truth I knew it could, for someone like me, be quite a difficult change to make. And yet the idea is strong enough, inspiring enough and revolutionary enough to brave all pressures. It is, after all, one of the main doors into the future.