Are you by any chance bowing to your taste buds, and giving your compassion the finger?   

You are better than that. This is an intervention.

There is a rash of bullying going on, damage being done daily, and you can stop it. Especially if you are now bullying. All you need to do is manage that fork you use every day with as much wisdom and compassion as you can employ. Our job here is to get you to watch the brief, pleasant video below. And other stuff too but let’s start with that.

Who are we? We are here because we love you. We’re a gathering of hundreds of thousands of molecules of simulated ink on a backlit screen, assembled and arranged to help you right now, and to stop you from doing further damage. You are hurting yourself and those you love. And those you have been tricked and trained to unlove. It has to stop.

Lend us the infinitely valuable commodity that is your attention.

As Trinity told Neo, “Please just listen.”

Photo: Youtube

I mean, don’t listen to us, we’re gonna defer to greater minds here.  You know your man Einstein was a vegetarian, right? Our hope is that like him, you will skip that burger, not for the poor cow, but for the poor human in the mirror.

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”       

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Whoa!  Strong stuff from an artist, wouldn’t you say? People cringe at this thought, and vegans are forever taking hits for caring more about non-human life than human life.

But look again, Polly, things are not what they seem. Leo here is predicting that we will examine closely the huge bully operation that is animal murder. And this is the guy, can we shoehorn in, who foretold the helicopter. He saw much that is invisible to us. He knew that holding reverence for the raccoon is keeping human life sacred.

We’re  losing you. That word—“sacred”—has us rolling our own eyes all over the keyboard. Talk about typeface. Yoga, at least, can be innocent. Iyengar in “Light On Yoga” advising yogis to look to the moon when discouraged slays us like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl presented with a puppy, every time.

Yoga side note!  Dharma Mittra, top hatha practitioner, ever:

“Stop eating flesh. That is yoga.”

But Innocent got passed by, didn’t it? The train didn’t even pause at Sacred this decade; or if it did, we were too busy being on our iPhones, artlessly advocating bee annihilation.

How are we going to get anywhere with you by encouraging you to remember what is sacred, when we are busy running from the train to the car, then trying like hell to discover from where the next full tank of gas is coming, and long range plans are to get a new set of tires? No way is how. But hey, swing for the fences or sit on the bench, right?

Here goes.

This life is sacred, I’m telling you.

We just forgot that because it slipped our minds. We are awesome and we have dignity, we are creatures of great beauty.  The slip we’ve made into chaotic knuckleheads from hell, inhaling distilled suffering like so much candy, is as temporary as a high school romance, and hey, she never really liked you anyway.

As lords, as high beings, as amazing beautiful creatures, we enjoy the power of free choice. We can shake this delusion and abdicate the crooked throne of “Torturing Overlord.” It’s an uncomfortable seat, anyway.

As lord on your throne, what is your scepter?  It is your fork, my love. Use it wisely: options outside of “Torturing Overlord” include “Friend”, “Kind companion”, and “Sister.”  They are yours to choose, and believe me, they fit you better.

“Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

~Thomas Edison

Love to include the guy who has kept us out of the dark since before we were babies. Keeping you out of the dark is really what we are after. Because you know what we were before we became vegan?  Uninformed.  A little research goes a long way on this topic.  You will find that vegans very often traffic in facts, and are also often assailed with emotionality.

(“It takes 1799 gallons of water to make a pound of beef? Well, tomatoes are well known to cause stupidity and death.”)

We don’t have genuine illumination to offer, as Edison did. But we have a seriously great link. To this video.  Which rocks, and says it all, gently. Check it out.

The simplicity and the completeness of that take on fork management: it is straightforward but complete.

The wisdom of Thoreau when he says,

“I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”

These choices we have, three to five times a day, to do serious damage or to do way less serious damage.

That you were open-minded enough to read this, and that maybe it ignited something.

May the fork be with you.

 Like elephant journal readers for animal rights on Facebook.

~

Editor: Kate Bartolotta