Here’s something really honest. My chest has been hurting for three days now, first on the left side, now on the right side. It’s not a consequence of working out. Lately, I’ve been all about the booty and abs. So, yeah, it’s disconcerting (but I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ve never taken such good care of myself as I have been now). This sensation in conjunction with this video I saw today have me thinking about the value of life. I’m sure this has been swirling around all of our thoughts these days. I don’t know the last time a death toll was part of my daily life…Never?
We will give up our liberties to protect life. We will buy out masks to protect life. What is your life to you? My life, I guess, always feels like I’m one step away from what I want to achieve, a journey, right? It’s a path that I am just beginning to walk to down. Every day is different and new. I can’t imagine having a wrench thrown into all of it right now. I’ve lived a life full of memories, I enjoy my home, and I have a whole prospective life of hopes and dreams just waiting for me on the other side of luck and motivation. There are loved ones here that I want to keep loving. My life is precious. Do you feel the same way? What’s most valuable to you in your day? Is it that warm hug? It is the scent of someone’s hair? Is it just sitting down in a soft chair and smiling? Notice that I haven’t put any concrete value on my life. No dollar signs, no prestige. It’s the intangibilities, the sensations of being alive, mean all the world to me. That’s all we’ve got. The warmth of connection, the smile you can see in contented eyes, breathing in the fresh air with a nice stretch, the hope of self-improvement and the excitement of things to come.
We are not the only ones who aspire to enjoy these simple, vital pleasures. If someone can love, why are they denied love? I just posted a vlog about empathy. Let us be clear. Our choices affect others. My life is just that, one life, one measly life, but to me and to others who know me, my life is a BFD (big f*cking deal). My life is everything to me. Without it I can’t learn, or love, or be. Why is it then that we look at animals as numbers where 1 has no value? I can easily become a +1 in a total of cases. To many, I’d have no face, no identity, I’d be just a number, but I don’t cease to have a face nor an identity because I could be counted by people who don’t see me.
Animals love. We are animals. We love. We are one of many. Many love. So I ask again: If someone can love, why are they denied that love? To become a sandwich? To be sprinkled on top of pasta? To be worn to the club? Our simple joy inspired by a good taste comes at the complete expense of a life robbed of love in every conceivable way. If you watch the video that I’ve linked, then I hope you’ve seen feelings in animals that we often justify to ourselves as not existing, or of being less important than our own. Our experiences are ours and although others might see us as “less than,” that does not make our experiences any less all-consuming for us. It’s all we’ve got.
Please, let’s practice compassion and empathy. Pain begets pain. We can see it in this quarantine. We can see it in our planet. We can see it in all of our choices, and they’re just that, aren’t they? Choices. What a hell of a freedom we have! We are so smart that we think we’re at the top of the food chain even though we’re built like herbivores. No unhinging jaws on us! Not even one stupid fang. What we’ve been given, as people, are fantastic cheat codes called higher-order thinking. We are so smart. Man, super-duper smart. You don’t even have to study a day in your life to be so much smarter than so many other animals yet, what do we do? We make the dumbest f*cking decisions for very short-sighted gains. We’re using a caveman brain, don’t you see? “I want meat, bottom line.” We can add a ton of justifications to that if we want to, “I want meat and I don’t care where it comes from,” or “I want meat and I care where it comes from but I’m gonna eat it anyway even though I know that it has dire consequences of the planet and animals.” That’s why the original statement stands so strongly. “I want meat, bottom line.” If you want it, get it, and eat it, then that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? Nothing else matters as much as what you want.
“Choices always stem from beliefs.”
Dr. Melanie Joy, Harvard graduate in Psychology
Someone who loved had no choice but to become that meat. I know this sounds ultra-vegan, but it’s absolutely true. I don’t even like it when someone’s expectation of me pushes into my comfort zone. Imagine if I were only seen as someone else’s expectation with no comfort zone? Someone who never did a thing except be a victim to our caveman wants (Even though cavemen subsisted largely on vegetation, by the way. That’s why we can see so many colors) lost the little that they had, which was everything to them, for the sake of being eaten for a “want.” And we do this forsaking everything: Our health, the future of Mother Earth for our children, the animals we say we love, the pollution we say we hate. Why are we choosing to be so dumb-brained about this?
It’s not all on us. A lot is on them. Using “us” and “them” doesn’t seem so empathetic, I get that, but I mean them to be the big businesses that run the whole show. If we could make billions by convincing people to do something mindless (mindless = dumb-brained cuz we’re not using ours), then we’d be sending that message out in every creative way we could muster: women slowly eating hot dogs, happy cow faces on cheese, manliness based on food (I mean, c’mon), connecting identity to food to which we have no connection at all and of which we confuse with the connections to traditions. I’ll tell ya one thing. Someone’s using their brain, and they’re making a fortune on us and off the backs of others. They are playing us like a fiddle and we are paying for it and we refuse to hear anything else.
But if we choose to look our decisions in the face, to connect with the choices we make, we could avoid ALL OF IT, and I bet, if we can heal the heart with a plant-based diet, I’m sure we can heal the planet the same way.
Are we really free if our freedom is at the expense of others? It’s amazing. We have endless power in this. If you’re reading this and take part in the consumption of animals, as I did for a long time, then you have the absolute power to stop your part in it. No skin off our nose, right? Big whoop. I’ll just eat different delicious food. My family might not get it, maybe it’ll cause a fight, or maybe since these are people I love, they can hear me out and hopefully open up their big heart that they give to me to others too. Regardless, it’d be my decision, my own, no one else’s, not my family’s, just mine. I only lead by example. Imagine how it would feel to look at ourselves in the mirror and be perfectly aware that something shitty is going on, something so shitty that we shut out the images just as fast as we shut our mouths on a bite, and see in that mirror a reflection of ourselves that exactly matches what we have in our heart.
That, my friends, is freedom.
Let's Be Clear 