The meaning of trust and the trust of meaning

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What must it be like for a young man or woman, now living independently, setting up on their own and perhaps coming to terms with daily, domestic decisions. Food becomes a major area for decision-making. Perhaps the most important food decision – are they going to be boycotting animal stuff?

They know if they do, it will be a huge statement of compassion and good sense. If they do, it’s likely beforehand that they’ll have weighed up the advantages and disadvantages, and started to experiment with new ideas, which could affect the rest of their lives. So, let’s look at what would be involved.

In practical food terms, what does it mean to acknowledge the importance of compassion? First up, this means no animal foods, only plant-based foods and is that going to be nutritionally safe? You can only make your choice based on information received from those who’re better informed, from books, etc. But since this is your life you are playing with, your decision requires trust, just as a bungy-jumper will have to trust the strength and length of the rope.

Trusting a new idea might take a whole lifetime, or it could happen overnight. It comes down to where we’re at, regarding new ideas and taking them on board, especially where so much is at stake - over one’s food choices. Once you’ve weighed the pros and cons and finally arrived at a clear picture, you go with it, one step at a time, rather like climbing a hill. Each step might feel like hard work. But once you’ve made the decision, to intend to climb the hill, you can better deal with anything you meet on the way. If you knew beforehand every obstacle you’d encounter, you might never set out in the first place.

Anyway, for you it might NOT be like slogging up a never-ending hill, but quite the opposite. If you decide to go vegan, meaningfulness lessens the difficulty, because perhaps you’ve known all along that promoting liberation for animals is possible from the moment you stop using them. The work of ‘being an animal liberationist’ is in itself uplifting, meaningful, stimulating. It’s almost as if, while you were an omnivore, you had to keep your mouth shut about something you did feel strongly about. And now, you are free to express your feelings. Going vegan might, at first, feel like hard work ... so, redefine the word ‘work’.

Promoting vegan principle, and living by it, is a new type of work. It’s unpaid and maybe frustrating, because we’re breaking so much new ground. And because there’s so much opposition, we constantly have to defend ourselves. And in the daily routines of living, for instance in the kitchen, where everything takes longer than expected. Cooking meals, for instance, means we have far less ready-prepared compounds and need to go back to the raw materials to make, for instance, something like a simple burger. And when shopping, everything needs double-checking and background-ing. It means we have to boycott and, before that, we have to learn about such things as modern animal husbandry methods to confirm our initial decision to boycott.

Progress is slowed by our omnivore friends’ resistance or even hostility. And when we start to promote vegan principle, it’s annoying to find some of our fellow vegans dragging their feet (by being less activist than we’d anticipated).

All this is a right-of-passage for vegans. We have to go through each stage of impatience and frustration, to find out what sort of person we are and what kind of people others are.

On a personal level we, early-on, need to find out whether we are ‘quiet’ or ‘noisy’ types. For noisy vegans who want to talk, if we make any breakthroughs, it’s great; there’s nothing quite like it. It’s like no other satisfaction - communicating this most important subject. Even for the failed communicator this is no less an important subject, not merely because we’re attempting to save people from obesity but because we’re introducing what I would term the greatest panacea for our age – vegan principle being the ultimate statement of non-violence. Yes, it’s wonderful when we connect but often we don’t. Most often a wall of resistance faces us, and we’re only seen as ‘the enemy’.

Animal Rights is a fascinating subject and something we can get our teeth into, communication-wise! It’s an up-hill task especially because it’s so urgent, but it’s never uninteresting. And never, for one minute, have I ever thought it insignificant to the future of both planet and our own species. And I hope I’ve never ever let anyone think that I regard myself as ‘the enemy’!