Good Maintenance for the Inanimate

1931:

Many of my most treasured objects today are complex structures. Machines. And something special is involved in ‘owning’ one. Owning something suggests ‘caring’ for it – I’m automatically involved with its well-being as soon as I start to make use of it. I ‘care’ for my cat, care for my car. Car maintenance, aircraft maintenance, teeth maintenance, each highlight the risk of not attending to them - like the failure to maintain an aircraft, and it all ending in catastrophe. But all this caring, maintaining, cleaning, etc. takes time and effort. Each application of care costs us something. The insurance industry encourages us to be parsimonious and indecisive. It profits accordingly (from our wobbling between ‘just-in-case’ & ‘it may never happen’). It offers us two choices: either we spend money and feel safe or we neglect safety and save money. That’s a nice dichotomy. Fear wins, scaring us into parting with our ‘hard-earned’ cash.

I get up each day, worrying and frowning, carrying a list of things to do, things to be maintained, and I feel ‘overwhelmed’ – all I hear is a warning about my inability to prioritise - a little care here, an insurance policy there, safety, safety, safety, and it’s never ending. I spend my life searching for the best insurance. Which eventually leads us to veganism.

At first, my first thought was that this is my best insurance policy (even though later on it became so much more). The food almost guarantees bodily health and a clear conscience. It’s cheaper to eat this way too and obviously, I soon enough realised that it’s less environmentally damaging. Over the years, I realised it was building a more disciplined character in me and, most importantly, it made me feel safe.

That’s what makes me care so much for it. Like a well maintained bike or aircraft, I feel safe enough using it, using this diet. Coincidentally it opens up my compassion for the tortured animals. It lets me into this empathy-centred, vegan-principled-philosophy, on whose tracks I can run safely.