At the age of around 13, while on a two-week stay in the country, I stepped out of the back door, looked downward, and saw a little round insect about the size of a split pea. For some reason still unknown to me, I reached out, placed my finger on the little creature’s back, and crushed him or her. Nearly 30 years later, I still remember being filled with the devastating recognition of the violence in this act, as it dawned on me that what I had taken from this tiny someone was nothing less than life itself. In that moment, I decided that, if for no reason other than to pay penance, I had to become a vegetarian.
I don’t remember much more about my first vegetarian experience except that, sadly, it wasn’t long before I changed my mind, and forgot about it completely.
Around two years later, at the age of 15, I was away from home again, staying with the family of a friend in the beautiful New Zealand area of Golden Bay. The youngest person in the house was an eight-year-old girl, and she had recently announced to her family that she was going to be a vegetarian. As I witnessed this young girl making a stand that I myself (nearly twice her age) had failed to uphold, I was suitably humbled, and decided to follow her example.
When I returned home from that trip, I became a vegetarian for the second time. (Years later, long after veganism had become a central focus of my life, I found out that the young girl who had inspired me had been motivated by a desire to punish her parents, as they had recently killed her beloved sheep to be eaten by the family.)
When I was seventeen, I read a book that explained how male chicks in hatcheries, considered valueless to the egg industry, are ground up alive as waste products. I couldn’t face the thought anymore, and eggs were immediately off the menu.
A little while later, I was talking with a friend who told me about passing some cows in a field while on vacation with a vegan friend. He described how it had moved him when his friend had gazed at the cows in their bucolic surroundings and simply said, pensively, ‘Poor girls…’ When we parted ways that afternoon after an honest exchange about our shared resistance to the truth of the matter, I resolved, then and there, not to eat any more dairy.
It was the end of the year 2000, when I was 19, before I came to understand what being vegan really means. At the beginning of that year, I had attended a workshop facilitated by the founders of Gentle World. They explained how veganism was the foundation of their ethical belief system, and pointed to their commitment to shared ideals as a reason for the group’s longevity.
Intrigued, I visited the community in the Far North of NZ, an experience that turned out to be the precursor to my decision to join. My two-week stay led to the first time I looked honestly at the hypocrisy in my ‘veganism.’
In short, I learned that I wasn’t really vegan at all.
I suppose it began when a very kind person pointed out that the necklace I was wearing around my neck was actually a piece of someone’s bone, and asked me to please remove it ‘at least while inside our house.’ I was floored.
Around six months later, I was camping with Gentle World in the mountains of Arizona, with my leather boots still in my possession, when another friend casually mentioned that she found it strange when people said they were using their leather items ‘until they wore out.’ She said, ‘would anyone say that about a human-skin lampshade from the Holocaust?’
In an instant, the truth of the matter became obvious, and I said goodbye to my leather.
Two months or so after that, I found myself at the organization’s educational center in Hawaii, where one of the founders was delivering a powerful presentation. I don’t remember many details of the talk, but I do remember clearly that I felt my defenses drop in an instant. She said one thing that I will always remember the essence of: ‘I can’t stop the animal industry from killing and torturing and enslaving animals… But I can stop myself from being a part of it. They’re not doing it for me.’
Something in me shifted.
All of a sudden, I just wanted to be free from all of it, and to be able to join my new friends in saying, ‘Not for me.’
With that epiphany, my desire for anything derived from the body of any animal disappeared altogether. After that point, being vegan became simple, easy, and comfortable.
As more and more people express their gratitude for the great gifts that veganism bestows, it amazes me that even more of my fellow seekers don’t take advantage of this wonderful opportunity for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual awakening.
