Ah, but the loneliness!!

1766: 

What’s it like being an animal activist, someone who wants animals to have a life but whose words fall on deaf ears? With almost everyone chomping away on their meat and various animal secretions, nobody seems to be listening. No one is interested in anyone who seems to be denying them their pleasures.

         

As vegans, we know how it feels to be alone but perhaps it’s essential, because it lets us empathise more closely with animals. It helps us not to forget that domesticated animals are not only alone but at the mercy of violent humans. It’s no consolation though, for us personally, when we realise the apathy and silence of most people around us, with their hardness of outlook. It’s even noticeable in dear friends, when they’re trying to shield themselves from taking a ‘soft’ view. They’re harder than we might want them to be or even they want to be; they’re not communicating with their soft side for fear of what they might become.

         

From a personal point of view, in wanting to be an advocate for animals I still want to feel close to my friends. Do I sacrifice one for the other? It’s noticeable that the louder we speak out the sooner friends seem to turn away.

There’s a deal of pain in being marginalised. It’s dangerous to feel cut off from others. It might drive us crazy, but there are greater dangers if we need acceptance enough to turn us back to our old idiot-ways.

If we’re serious about addressing ‘the greater good’, we have to find ways of NOT feeling so alone that we fall into feeling that it’s all pointless. It helps to know other vegans, it helps perhaps to meet up with a whole bunch of animal rights activists on a regular basis. But in reality, we all live apart. We’re on our own. This is one big personal challenge for most vegans - not in the changing of our diet but in facing up to a diminished social life and the shortage of simpatico companions.