The yellow brick road

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To be constructive, we need to train our thoughts towards how things could be. I don’t mean ‘feeling lucky’ or wishful thinking or romanticising or being idealistic, I mean taking a wide-eyed look at the significance of what’s happening when we are about to change. But why would you bother to change if you didn’t think it worth doing, or if the only reason for changing were to relieve guilt?

‘Change’ - we get stuck in the rut of our habits but we do like the idea of change and yet believe we lack the energy needed to make it happen.

I look at parents sometimes, their time and energy invested in kids and home and careers; they’ve got no time for change. (Whereas for someone like me, with no family responsibilities and far less need to work long hours, it’s the opposite). For most adults there aren’t enough hours in the day, so ‘change’ is not considered. “I’m sorry, but things will have to remain largely as they are”. A radical change of diet, for instance, would seem unrealistic.

So, we stay fixed by habit and time constraints. Any major food change is out of the question. The sorts of changes vegans are suggesting (to fit with animal rights) seem unlikely, especially when it concerns a whole family’s food.

This is where ‘change’ implies action and urgency, as if it feels like all or nothing, since if there is some change it may be too half hearted to work. Perhaps, all in good faith, our attempts to change fail, and that then makes us afraid of change. And yet it might work the other way around; if we are thirsty for success but fail at the attempt, it could be that this one failure could make us even more determined.

What if we say, “Determination is everything”? What if we introduce a little force on ourselves, if we ‘up’ our expectations? It’s likely we might wobble, and in doing so look about for some support.

Wanting support from others is possibly where some vegans go wrong. We’ve wanted others to agree with us. We’ve wanted us all to join hands but we underestimate the enormity of the thing we’re trying to achieve. Perhaps we’ve expected and demanded too much, too soon, and by wanting support we’ve shown desperation, and that’s an unattractive look to anyone who sees it in us.

Support? No. It seems we aren’t going to be given it. So we begin to feel we’ve been let down, which leads to resentment, which brings on anger.

Do we sometimes purposely bring it on, this sequence of events, so that we can feed our own anger to fuel our own righteous indignation? And if so, how do we break that cycle?

As unsupported defenders of animals’ rights we mustn’t ever forget those poor beings who have a lot more to worry about than us. We have to keep reminding ourselves of their much more horrible life and their very real desperation. For this reason we need to shed that ‘poor-me’, that whingeing pessimism and that need for personal success.

We need to be less afraid of looking at the bigger picture - the ‘could-be’ that evolves towards the ‘will-be’. We need to be a bit insistent, even with ourselves. We need to appear to be a little more certain than we actually feel. And feel a little more certain about change happening soon even if it doesn’t seem logical. And then to want for the best even if we aren’t around to see it. (I mean, change happening after our own lives have ended)

The changes which are already happening (especially in people’s attitudes to our non-human, animal friends) are the result of fifty or so years of consciousness-raising. Everyone these days, even kids, knows the worst of it - they know what ‘battery hens’ means, or they hear supermarket chains advertising ‘cage-free eggs’ and ‘sow-stall-free pork’. Change is in the air, perhaps not fast enough, but it’s happening. And in terms of Animal Rights, these take the form of voluntary dietary changes (the most private habit-change imaginable) and such changes don’t need any swearing-of-allegiance to it. We only need to want it and do whatever we can towards it. On the downside there are a few initial inconveniences, but on the upside it is the dawning of a probable-future (a future most would approve of).

Animal Rights implies such a different way of looking at life. Within that tiny mind-shift there’s a revolution about to take place. No blood or war or force or authority or danger, just a great leap forward in the form of an attitudinal shift. And what do we need to do to bring that about? Nothing but merely consider vegan principle as a possibility.

In a vegan world there’d be no one watching or finger-wagging or hurrying us on, only a little self-generated action.

The bigger picture is like a book which you can put aside when you’ve read enough for the day. No one’s pressuring anybody to read it. And the book itself is passive, just as the future is. It accepts us if we accept it.

If we’re ready (and if we want to, and if we’re attracted to it) then we only need to follow the yellow brick road, following along it as we build it.