Rage and abandonment

845: 

We (might) say, “Look, will you, at what they’re doing to the animals. It’s absolutely disgusting”. We say, “Stop buying their stuff. Stop grabbing what they’re offering you”. But how often do we ever get a chance to say any of this? And even if we did say it, surely it’s the way we say it, to show we’re concerned both for the animals as victims and for the humans as perpetrators. It’s likely that if we ever did say this, it would simply sound like an attacking rage.

            For those of us who are concerned, we find it hard to suppress our feelings. And I’m arguing that most times we should try hard to suppress them, for the sake of a better outcome. This ‘concern’ we have is a double worry. We’re as much worried by what’s happening as we are about our inability to stop it happening.

            I often think it’s like passing a house, looking through a window and seeing a kid being threatened by an adult and being entirely unable to help. It’s possible that things aren’t always quite as they seem. We have to say to our self, “Oh, they’re just having a scrap, it’s none of my business”, and then walk on. It’s very similar to turning a blind eye and then getting so used to that, because everyone else seems to be doing it, that it no longer registers. We walk on.

            It’s very difficult for the animal activist to imagine how any of this killing will be stopped. Lying awake at night I, like others, picture small animals, alone, frightened, and in a state of god-knows-what-unimaginable-hell and dread. Lying awake, I think, “This is happening tonight, now, at this moment”. I might be deeply concerned but it doesn’t help any of them. And yet my imagination is showing me all this suffering, and that it’s happening just down the road, not so far from where I live.

            In these sleepless moments I think we’re all doomed. I envisage the torment behind the production of each breakfast egg, the unheard torment behind closed-doors. As I imagine it, it gets into my head. I can hear them scream, and my heart goes out to them both for the suffering and anguish they’re feeling. I wonder if they know that nobody cares for them? Or if they feel abandoned?

             But if I said any of this to you, as you were eating your breakfast egg, you’d want to chuck me out. You’d make me look over-emotional, in order to shut me up.

            I feel like vegans live on different planets to the rest of the population, or that we speak a foreign language. Once you’re vegan it’s impossible to ever again be switched off, like we switch off a radio. Once you know about it and act on it, there’s no going back. Moving forward is only ever about shifting consciousness. The greatest challenge the activist-advocate has, is to make a small impression on those who most want to switch us off - ironically, these are the ones who’re often the most sensitive, who’re potentially closest to our point of empathy.