Going vegan

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If you get past all the obstacles and finally become vegan, the next hurdle, testing our limits, is to talk about it. Overcoming all the obvious anger, shame and new-habit-forming, one has to learn to speak on the subject as if one loves omnivores-despite-everything.

Maybe it isn’t our job to inspire others directly, not by persuasion anyway. Maybe the vegan is merely living out their life as if enacting a play, into which each person will enter, at some time. Just in the act of ‘being’, perhaps we give others something to watch. If they like what our veganism does to us maybe they’ll start to consider the benefits; at first it will appear as self benefit (health, conscience, passion, etc), and later on the principles which attest to something far deeper.

Certainly, in our society, there is a very real concern that veganism is a dangerous path to tread. Health concerns are no longer taken as seriously as the social implications of such a socially-isolating way of life, for it is a very different lifestyle affecting many social situations. A vegan is likely to feel the cold wind of failure, or at least the threat of loss of friends and acquaintances, because we won’t participate in so many social gatherings where food dominates. So, we have to show to people what it’s like to fail in this way, and yet hold fast to principle.

With every failure (and there are many) we have to learn not get depressed about it. There’s always going to be some edge for vegans, at least until many more come on board.

On a personal level vegans sit between two uncomfortable emotions, outrage and intolerance. We feel it and we can’t help but show it, and if we feel it, others will pick it up. Alternatively, if we seem at ease with ourselves they will pick that up instead. For that reason alone we should keep our heads held high (but not too high!), stop vilifying the ‘terrible omnivores’ for disagreeing with us, and simply encourage them to talk. Easier said than done, but by keeping that emphasised strongly we give them no chance to see how vulnerable we might be feeling inside.

If we vegans can ignore our discomfort (over our failure to ‘communicate our message’), we’ll get used to being rebuffed. If we get irritated and suffer for it, it’s always going to be nothing compared to the far greater discomfort the animals are subjected to. Compared with those who’re imprisoned on farms and other hideous torture chambers throughout the world, our discomfort is nothing. Our greatest challenge is to transmute the negatives into a strengthening of our passion.