Green Thoughts

    My decision to go vegan was primarily based on compassion for sentient life. I was traveling with my daughter to go to shopping, when we passed a meat-packing plant. I've passed this particular facility many times without incident, but for some reason, the thought of all the animals that have had their lives abruptly ended within those walls filled me with such emotion and revulsion that I swore off animal consumption, and eventually all animal use. I am a firm believer that we can, and therefore should, live a life that inflicts the least amount of harm to others, and that since all sentient life is of equal moral value, animals of all kinds deserve at least as much compassion and respect as we give each other.

Since adopting this compassionate approach to daily life, I find myself more patient and attentive to my animals and my children, more confident, and just happier overall. 

    Having done a lot of reading, as well as watching documentaries like Forks Over Knives, it's also clear that adopting a whole food, plant-based diet can and does have a positive, disease-fighting effect on my health. I am losing weight, I feel healthier and have more energy, and the chronic pain I experience daily has become a little easier to manage. Eventually I want to cease any and all prescription medications for pain, as well as weaning myself from the antidepressants I've been taking for the past 2+ years. 

I firmly believe that I can improve my health dramatically, extend my life and purify myself this way. This is the best choice for me, and in fact, I believe it's the best choice for everyone -- but while I am a practitioner and advocate of animal rights, I am only willing to learn and educate. My wife and her parents are vegetarians, and have their own reasons for not going vegan, which I can accept and respect. My sister in law is a veterinarian, a farmer and an animal lover, but eats meat (which I also choose to accept). It's difficult, having been born and raised in Canada's 'beef country', to talk about this without confusing and alienating people, but I think it's possible to coexist with people of different beliefs and practices without conflict -- in fact, it should be built into veganism too: the idea that as much as I think we have earned our way out of the right to be equal to animals just by virtue of how much damage we've done, true compassion should be unconditional and universal. 

I wouldn't call myself an "activist", though. There are several abolitionist vegan voices out there that do wonderful work, but I am not always a voice among them. Gary L. Francione is by far the most visible entity in that arena, and his writings are very important (even though that group's approach tends to be more hard-edged and less patient with new people). If you want to learn about veganism as a moral imperative, that is the simplest and best place to start. 

I'm proud of the decision to go vegan, and I hope I can set a positive, peaceful example for others to make that decision, too.  

- J.