Thursday, September 4, 2014

Connecting with transitioning vegans

Positive connections spring from kindness (public domain image)
So, you're in a vegan group or on a vegan page and your fellow vegans are bashing some poor innocent who's still in transition. Do you join them, berate the meanies, come to the victim's defense or just walk away? I think how you react to this scenario could make a huge difference. Here's why.

For whatever reason, the transitioning vegan is at least headed down the path to a kinder life. It doesn't really matter whether they're there yet. The point is, they're trying. Bashing them is a great way to drive them away.

Joining the critics who feel you have to be completely vegan right away, with no transitioning allowed is so elitist. Most of us weren't born vegan, in that even though veganism is a natural human diet, it's one that most of us adopted later in life after learning what we now know.

Face it, unless you were raised vegan, you likely had some kind of transition period. You should therefore accept that others will travel a similar path to their eventual goal of cruelty free living. Why not show some respect for their journey, rather than discouraging them from going vegan with harsh words?

As vegans, we believe in living a kind hearted, cruelty free lifestyle. We should represent that with our interactions with humans as well as our interactions with other animals. I think the best interaction with a transitioning vegan would be to give support and ignore those who are critical.

As they say, it's better to promote what you love than to bash what you hate.