Well, as much as I hate to say it I'm usually very scared of making people question their beliefs or doings because I'm not the kind of person who can deal with being disliked very well... silly I know but yeah.
Somebody posted this great interview of Gary Youofsky yesterday on Facebook and I thought it was fantastic! So fantastic that I thought I would do something I dared not usually do; send it to my Dad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4&feature=autofb
My Dad is pretty cool about my choice of lifestyle, he doesn't tell me it's wrong or anything but he's a very logical man who simply can't take anything at face value (which is probably a good thing really...). We've had discussions before about it; I told him about why it is exactly I don't agree with meat eating and he seems to understand it. However, he is a big meat eater, he eats his greens but loves his meat, and being a very science-like guy he often tells me very Sam-Neil-like facts about why eating meat is good yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, I got a very good response from my Dad this morning who... well wasn't exactly jumping right into vegan-world... but he showed a real interest and much better understanding of it all. In fact, he actually wrote to Gary and showed his interest whilst still asking a few questions about some things. As well as this, he downloaded the clip, and offered to show it to anyone who was interested and is hoping to show it to my Step mum.
So, I might not have made a vegan out of him... but I'm really glad that he now is able to both understand more about it and is showing a better interest about it than before. And on top of that, spreading the word. And I think that even if we can't make a veg*n out of every person we know, isn't it better to get people thinking beyond what they're told?