"If nothing else matters, there is nothing to save"

I wrote this tonight.  I just thought I would share it with you guys as it reflects my transition into veganism in hopes that it will inspire some vegetarians out there

When I was a child, I used to love eating chicken. Chicken salad was my favourite.  I never gave a thought about how it got to the table - all I thought about was how good it tasted.  

When I was teenager, I was on holiday with my parents in Vietnam.  I saw a piglet, obviously extremeley distressed, strapped upside down to the back of a motorbike.  I asked my mum where it was going and her reply - being a realist that she is - was to blithely tell me it was going to the market to be killed and sold.  That very day, I made the connection between a living, breathing, intelligent animal, capable of thoughts, feelings and personality, and the food that would be my dinner.  I couldn't touch meat after that.  All I saw from then on was pain on a plate.  

I went on to be a very happy vegetarian for 7 years.  I used to scoff at judgemental vegans who would tell me that I was a hypocrite for being vegetarian and caring about animals when I still wore leather, ate eggs and drank milk.  I scoffed at them, called them hippies and thought they needed to shut it.  I loved my leather, loved my eggs and my dairy, and I wasn't going to give it up because somebody told me to.  

When my friend Caeli and I signed up for the 30 day vegan challenge last year, I was beginning to understand that my understanding of the world was incorrect.  It was insulated, naive and ignorant.  I was beginning to learn that "free range eggs" didn't really mean "free range" but rather, "locked in a bigger box with a window".  Nevertheless, I didn't last.  Being vegan was damn hard.  The food was high-maintenance, and required trips to the health food store.  I loved cheese too much. I loved having milk and cereal for breakfast.  Making cakes for my friends' birthdays.  There is a lot of emotion attached not to the food itself, but to memories and feelings that food can provoke in us.  In any case, my ignorance won out and I reverted back to eggs and cheese before the 30 days were over.  Apart of me knew enough of the cruelty of the egg and dairy industry to not want to know any more.  It hurt too much to inform my ignorance, so instead I blocked it out.  

When I met up with Caeli 3 months later, I found out she had completed the 30 days very sucessfully and happily.  She had enjoyed the change so much that she had not switched back after the 30 days.  This blew me away.  Caeli, somebody real and tangible in my life, had made the change.  Not some strange moralistic hippy, but Caeli, a friend.  It made going vegan seem so much more achievable.  It still seemed hard though, and kind of weird.  But I wanted to try it, at least for that 30 days I never completed, and see if I could make it work.  By then I knew enough about factory farming that I felt uneasy about the food I was eating, and I was ready to challenge myself.  

About 4 months ago, I went completely vegan in my diet.  It was not easy to tell people about being vegan.  I felt judged.  People would tell me I was crazy.  That you can't live without these things in your diet and that you would be in a huge nutritional deficit (and looking back, I don't know why I didn't tell these people that if they can't have an educated opinion, to not have an opinion at all).   I let these criticisms get to me at the start and it made being vegan a really hard thing to stay true to.  But, I had support from my best friends, and I stuck to it.  

I still wore leather though.  Couldn't give it up. Anybody who knows me reasonably well enough knows I collect bags and shoes. I didn't think I had to give it up.  I argued that leather was still OK to wear because it came from the meat industry.  Cows weren't being killed for their skin, they were being killed for their meat.  It would even be wasteful to not wear it...

I believed this until tonight.  

When I just watched a video of a baby calf being skinned alive and then thrown into a dumpster with other skinned calve - I watched it die over five minutes while I looked into its eyes.   The pain I felt, and still feel in remembering it, was indescribable.  Tthe calf was staring right into my eyes while it died.  This method of live-skinning is preferred because it keeps the hide intact to improve its market value.  

I feel horrible for being complicit in this. I feel sick in knowing that I have bought so many shoes this year.  All of my hard earned money, going straight into the pockets of those I abhore, despise and resist.  

Therefore, from tonight, I am publicly vowing never to buy another leather product again.  I know that the lure of Balenciaga will always exist but I am hoping that in writing this, I can stick to what I so strongly beleive in.

I hope in reading this, you can take the time to think about whether or not you want to be apart of it either.  I don't expect anybody to make a change for me, or for anybody.  I made the change for me, and just me.  I just hope that by reading this, you might question what you have been told all your life.  Things like "we are meant to drink milk" and "humans are designed to eat meat" are falsities propagated by powerful agricultural bodies who keep the government on their payroll.  I encourage you to think for yourself, and make a choice - for yourself.  Don't swallow whatever society throws at you.  

I often get questioned/judged/laughed at/treated differently because I of the food choices I make.  Sometimes, I think people use it as a form of self-defense; they are expecting me to judge or attack them because they eat meat, so they try to get in there and attack me first.  That is not me.  It has never been me.  You will never hear me pass a judgemental comment.

My choice is mine to make, and your choice is yours and yours only. I am not trying to take that away by imposing a set of do-gooder morals on you.  I only hope that by reading this, you at least stop for a second  and think - what choice do I want to make?  Do I need another pair of cheap leather shoes that I won't wear for more than a passing season?  While I am sure that I will continue to wear what leathergoods I already own - and that is a debate in itself -  but I am quite sure that I will never quite see luxury goods as being so luxurious anymore.  

Finally - this was extract is by one of my favourite writers, Jonathan Safran Foer.  He describes his grandmother's recount of the war and how she survived:

“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”
“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.”
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher?”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”