I’m a vegetarian mainly because I don’t like seeing animals
tortured and abused, much less slaughtered.
I’ll never understand hunting, or the mindset that goes with it. How could anyone think killing things is fun? Seeing suffering and death hurts me so much
that I base my food, clothing, and other choices around not being a part of
it. I have to, it can’t be something I
knowingly contribute to.
I ate meat for twenty nine years, been a vegetarian for
twenty five plus years now. I never felt
right about it. Hunting never interested
me. Any time neighborhood kids would
torture animals for “fun” – I have to believe anyone who was a kid saw some of
that growing up – it hurt me. I felt
hypocritical eating meat but never really being interested in killing and/or
skinning my own animals. Even fishing,
which I did a little bit of when I was young, bothered me.
I had issues with drugs and alcohol in my teens and early
twenties to deal with. Once I quit using
(at age twenty nine), a month later I quit eating meat. I had to change my moral compass. For me, this was a huge thing. Start living by a set of moral standards
aligned with what I felt was right.
I thought it would be hard to quit as I liked the taste of meat,
and I had a hard time imagining meals without it. It really wasn’t hard at all, and as an added
bonus I believe a strict vegetarian diet is much healthier as well. I certainly felt way better physically within
a couple weeks of not eating meat.
By the time you’re old enough to think about what you’re
doing… the pain and anguish you’re causing by your food choices… you’re already
sucked in to the “meat as a way of life” dining program. Like anything in life, changing that can be
hard. First, you really have to want
to. In a strange way, I have a certain
respect for the meat eaters that can hunt and kill their own animals… at least
they know what they’re doing and have no problem killing their own meal. I wasn’t one of those, though. I was the “as long as someone else kills and
packages this I’ll eat it” meat eaters.
Kill my own, no thanks. And that
just seemed hypocritical to me…
Then, on Nov 1,
1988 I decided to never use drugs and/or alcohol again. And I haven’t. I changed my life the second I made that
choice and committed to it.
A month later, I quit eating meat. Two choices made in two instants within a
month of each other by a twenty nine year old that I maintain to this day and
have changed the course of my life tremendously.
Are you living your life in alignment with what your inner
conscience tells you is right for you?
Visualize your perfect life – what would it look like? How would you spend your time? With whom would you spend it? How would you treat people? What would you do for a living?
Now, take a long hard look at where your life is at
currently… do they match? Why not? What is it that stands in the way of leading
the life you’d like to live?
I was asked those questions twenty five years ago and drugs
and alcohol were number one on my list.
Not living by any moral standards, no relationship with God was number
two. In two days I made choices that
changed that forever. Changing your
thoughts can change your life, but you have to commit and stick to it, which is
why so many people make big changes in life after “hitting bottom”. You need a strong emotional motive to keep
going with any major life change.
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