Here in Greece it is an almost unknown word. The few hundred vegans we exist, even if we live a completely normal and common life, when it comes to food habits, we get the attention which says "you are an alien or what" or the "what's wrong with you" or, some times, the "how do you do this?" look. Some times puzzled or with a gleam of a very well hidden admiration. When the life is not so "common", we may feel a bit more alien than usual, hehe. And that's my best part...
When I changed into vegetarianism nobody believed I would manage to do it. Because nobody from my environment was doing it. But they didn't know me well. After more than three years meat free, my mother still tries to tempt me with "delicious" for her foods. How can I explain to her that I don't smell and I don't taste the same way any more? That cooked food seems dead to me and meat, goodness sake!, is like eating my beloved cat, smelling like a smoked battlefield and coming right away from horror movies. How can I explain to someone that still eats meat the difference, the freedom, the sense of expanding? How I could do this even to me about 4 years ago?
And it is still so simple and beautiful. I didn't do it to lose weight (although I lost about 16 kilos all the way and I ended up to the weight I had in my teen past), I didn't do it because of a fashion that could change in three months the most (I am not a fashion type anyway) and I didn't do it because of a health problem (I was and still am perfectly healthy in a strange way).
One of the main reasons I stopped meat was the pain. Not a physical pain, although it could also transform into physical. A soul pain I didn't really knew I had, a pain well hidden into the corridors of my psyche, slightly moving embarrassed trying to realize itself. I was different from my childhood, "very sensitive" my mother would say, "why you puzzle your mind?", "you won't save the world". I didn't save the world, not yet anyway. But I was always feeling the weight of the world, not so much at my shoulders but in my soul mainly. The feelings of the others were my feelings, as a child I couldn't say the difference anyway. So, there was always something wrong with me. I had the pain, a reflection of a universal pain that others were feeling. I thought it was just from the people around me and, after working with it, I became a lot better to understand and dissociate myself from it. But there was always a grief, a silent despair that would not stop, an other kind of desperation.
After a couple of months meat free I started realizing the why. For the first time in my life. If I knew earlier, I would never eat the flesh of an other creature. But I didn't. Nobody told me. Nobody would tell me what real freedom is. Maybe because none around me knew also. I realized that when we eat an other creature, when we eat flesh, we also take inside us his/her whole of psychology, the experiences and the complication of this creature's feelings - yes, all creatures have feelings, we are not the only ones - and also the pain and the death. The worse the human behavior to this creature, the worse we load over the pile of our own unconscious chaos' the more painful the death, the more pain and more death take inside us. The more the unconscious mourning we fail to understand, I failed to understand.
I can tell from my own experience, although the grief is not completely over yet, that only after some adjustment time I realized that something had happened. I was lighter, more peaceful and happier without some external event to justify this happiness. The pain was moving in slow motion, my inner time was changing and I was feeling more free with more strength. Mmm, I didn't know if it was to worry or to be glad about. And slowly I found out it was to be glad about.
Now, I would never change this freedom with any taste on earth. Even if it wasn't plastic and full of hormones and chemicals, it would still be death. And I don't think I like even the taste any more since the smell of cooked or roasted meat is unbearable to me and makes me sick. And an other good result: I don't have any guilt now to show my love to my cat Merlin or to any other animal, I am not going to eat neither them or any other relative of them, close or distant on the planet. :)
There are many sites that protest about animal rights, this one has a video with real events, the way we treat the other living creatures, the real way and not the one that ads tell us. It's not isolated events but the way almost all industries use everyday. It's too sickening and horrible for me but worths seeing it even only to be disgusted with ourselves and our specie.
And it is still so simple and beautiful. I didn't do it to lose weight (although I lost about 16 kilos all the way and I ended up to the weight I had in my teen past), I didn't do it because of a fashion that could change in three months the most (I am not a fashion type anyway) and I didn't do it because of a health problem (I was and still am perfectly healthy in a strange way).
One of the main reasons I stopped meat was the pain. Not a physical pain, although it could also transform into physical. A soul pain I didn't really knew I had, a pain well hidden into the corridors of my psyche, slightly moving embarrassed trying to realize itself. I was different from my childhood, "very sensitive" my mother would say, "why you puzzle your mind?", "you won't save the world". I didn't save the world, not yet anyway. But I was always feeling the weight of the world, not so much at my shoulders but in my soul mainly. The feelings of the others were my feelings, as a child I couldn't say the difference anyway. So, there was always something wrong with me. I had the pain, a reflection of a universal pain that others were feeling. I thought it was just from the people around me and, after working with it, I became a lot better to understand and dissociate myself from it. But there was always a grief, a silent despair that would not stop, an other kind of desperation.
After a couple of months meat free I started realizing the why. For the first time in my life. If I knew earlier, I would never eat the flesh of an other creature. But I didn't. Nobody told me. Nobody would tell me what real freedom is. Maybe because none around me knew also. I realized that when we eat an other creature, when we eat flesh, we also take inside us his/her whole of psychology, the experiences and the complication of this creature's feelings - yes, all creatures have feelings, we are not the only ones - and also the pain and the death. The worse the human behavior to this creature, the worse we load over the pile of our own unconscious chaos' the more painful the death, the more pain and more death take inside us. The more the unconscious mourning we fail to understand, I failed to understand.
I can tell from my own experience, although the grief is not completely over yet, that only after some adjustment time I realized that something had happened. I was lighter, more peaceful and happier without some external event to justify this happiness. The pain was moving in slow motion, my inner time was changing and I was feeling more free with more strength. Mmm, I didn't know if it was to worry or to be glad about. And slowly I found out it was to be glad about.
Now, I would never change this freedom with any taste on earth. Even if it wasn't plastic and full of hormones and chemicals, it would still be death. And I don't think I like even the taste any more since the smell of cooked or roasted meat is unbearable to me and makes me sick. And an other good result: I don't have any guilt now to show my love to my cat Merlin or to any other animal, I am not going to eat neither them or any other relative of them, close or distant on the planet. :)
There are many sites that protest about animal rights, this one has a video with real events, the way we treat the other living creatures, the real way and not the one that ads tell us. It's not isolated events but the way almost all industries use everyday. It's too sickening and horrible for me but worths seeing it even only to be disgusted with ourselves and our specie.
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