Five things I thought were wholesome entertainment before going vegan

The circus is unnatural entertainment (public domain photo)

My whole outlook has changed since going vegan. Rather than just taking things at face value, I look for the deeper consequences. For instance, I will not be participating in the ALS ice bucket challenge or contributing to that organization. Why? Because they do animal testing and not the mild kind, if there is such a thing. That's not all, though.

Rodeos/Horseback riding

This past summer I attended a rodeo in Deer Trail, Colorado. It was a big deal. Not only is it the home of the world's first rodeo, it's the home of my partner's grandparents. He went to high school there. The rodeo is a big part of the town's identity. Unfortunately, as we watched the cowboys flip the little calves around with no thought to their discomfort, we got a sick feeling in our stomachs. We also noticed the curving of the horses backs when the saddles were taken off. Curving caused by years of being ridden and ridden hard. We won't be going to any more rodeos.

Ranches/Farms

Doesn't it sound fun to have a working vacation at a farm or ranch. I used to think so. That was before I learned the extent to which we use and abuse the animals raised for food, clothing and more. It was before I learned that the meat and dairy industry is the biggest polluter on the planet. It was before I realized that a meat and dairy based diet wastes tons of water and grain and contributes to world hunger.

4-H Clubs

You know those cute little bunnies, calves and sheep with the blue ribbons? Do you know what happens to them after they get their prize? I do. The blue ribbons indicate their superior flavor. What's really sad is when the 4-H kids that raise them have to give them up to be sold for slaughter. It's very traumatic for them. Many of them cry. Some try their best to convince their folks to keep them as pets. They love these animals. How on earth is this a wholesome way to raise your kids?

Zoos

I used to take my kids to the Zoo all the time when they were young. I thought it was wholesome family entertainment. They got to see other animals up close that they wouldn't normally see here in the U.S. I thought it was a good educational experience for them. Even then, though, it bothered me the way the caged gorillas looked at me as I peered into their cage and their lives. Now, as a vegan, I don't go to zoos at all. Doing so would feel so wrong. I don't want to pay for other animals to be caged or take away their personal freedom. There's nothing wholesome about that.

Circuses

Circuses are even worse than zoos where the animals are concerned. Do you really think it's wholesome or natural to train other animals to entertain us? Zoos have been known to abuse animals in order to “train” them to do ridiculous things. Bears have their feet strapped to bicycles until they learn to ride. How many times do you suppose they fall and hurt themselves before they perfect this skill? Elephants are whipped when they don't perform well. Young animals are taken from their mothers at an early age to join the circus, just as young male calves are taken from their mothers and slaughtered as veal.

My entertainment is hardly worth all this.

I can live without the zoo, circus, rodeo, etc. if means I save another creature from the misery that comes with captivity. Some might argue that they treat their animals well. That's just the thing, though. Other animals are not ours to use and abuse. They're not ours to keep. They don't belong to us. They are individuals just like we are. They have feelings and families and rights. I'm glad that as a vegan, I have discovered the consequences of my actions are just as important as the actions themselves. Look below the surface, my friends. Even if you're not vegan, think about the form of entertainment you choose and how it impacts others. Have a heart.

Connecting with what you seek

Seek the good things in life and you will find them. (public domain photo)

What are you seeking in life? Chances are, whatever it is, you will find it. For instance, we all have that phase when we first become vegan where we seek out all the wrongs in order to make them right. It's a necessary part of the journey. After all, if you are not aware of the bad things, how can you possibly make positive changes to fix them?

So, what's the problem? Well, it's just that a lot of us never graduate to the next step. We get so involved in fighting what's wrong with the world that we never reach that other phase. The one where we start to realize that whatever we seek is quite often what we get.

So much is going on in the world that begs for activism and change. However, there is also an awful lot of good out there. By spending the majority of our time as vegans simply living the life we preach about, we are, in effect, drawing the very things we tell others are so wonderful to ourselves.

In other words, we create what we seek.

So let's give it a shot, shall we? Let's spend more time seeking out and creating peace than we do seeking out suffering and injustice. Instead of looking for wrongs, how about we simply switch our focus to doing right? Instead of telling everyone what's wrong with the world, how about we concentrate on showing them how beautiful it can be and what happy lives we are leading?

Yup, it's a journey.

The sounds of silence

Silence is not always a good thing. (public domain photo)

Like most vegans, I've been told many times that I should simply live my beliefs and shut-up about it. Some people tell me that non-vegans are sick to death of hearing about veganism. To which I reply that they're sick to death, for sure, but veganism is not the cause of their issues. It's their diet that's killing them (not to mention the planet and everything on it). Being silent under those circumstances would be nothing short of criminal as far as I'm concerned.I love my friends too much to do that to them!

The sounds of silence are echoing all around us if we care enough to give them a listen.

Farm life involves using and abusing animals, no matter how you slice it. Can you hear them crying for help or do you turn a deaf ear to the fact that they suffer, feel pain and care for each other just as we do? That includes dairy cows and those “humanely raised” animals too, by the way. Look it up.

Little children all over the world are crying themselves to sleep. They are dying daily from starvation and lack of clean water. Food and water they could have consumed is being foolishly sold and recycled through animals for consumption, instead of being eaten directly so everyone could be fed rather than just the fortunate few that a meat and dairy based diet caters to. (Resources go much further when directly consumed. Not to mention that the nutritional value is much higher.)

The planet is screaming for relief! Streams that were once teaming with life are dead due to algae overgrowth from nitrogen rich farm run-off. (Once again, dairy farms and humane animal farms are no better.) The earth was simply not meant to support the amount of animal life that is occurring as we over-breed other animals due to the demand for meat and dairy.)

People are dying due to diseases caused by poor diet, food additives and genetically altered crops, never realizing that all they had to do was make the right choice as to what should go on their fork and into their mouths.

Produce farmers who have sustained us happily for many years are crying too. They're losing their family farms because they refuse to use GMO seeds. They're being squeezed out. There are very few left that do not cater to Monsanto and big business. The ones that do are often sued and lose everything they have when GMO's migrate (on the wind) to their fields.

It's time for all of us, vegan or otherwise to connect with the fact that when we are silent, we pay for all of this. So, no, I will not be silent. Being silent is like signing a death warrant for everyone on this planet. I'm just not that kind of girl. I won't do it.

And yes, you do have a choice and here it is. You can change the way you do things or you can suffer the natural consequences of your actions. (Bad health, starvation, lack of water and a filthy planet that will not sustain any of us.)

And yes, what you eat IS my business. Because by choosing a meat and dairy based diet, you are not just killing yourself. You're killing all of us. You're giving my grand-kids less of a chance for survival in the future. You're telling them that their lives are not as important as your taste buds. Not only that, you're telling them they should repeat the process. And if you don't think I consider that my business, you don't know me very well.

So please, connect with the fact that silence kills. Go vegan. Go viral. Go verbal. All our lives depend on it.

Connecting with....everything

Come in peace, always (public domain)

In the last post, I talked about how after going vegan, my brain started going off with rapid fire connections. I now look at the world, society and everything else within human reality very differently. I still have a long way to go, though. I'm not there yet. Not by a long shot. I believe there are threads of energy connecting everyone and everything in existence and connecting with those threads is so freeing, so beautiful that it cannot be comprehended.

Sometimes I raise my hands to the sky and picture the giant web that connects us all reaching out for me and coursing into my soul. It makes me feel more a part of things than I have ever felt in conventional human society. I feel the same connection when I touch a tree or work the soil in my garden or feel the hand of one of my grand-kids in mine.

In fact, I'm slowly realizing that this false world we have created for ourselves is taking us further and further away from the natural world and who we were intended to be (the longer we let it go on and nourish it and serve it). Does that make me seem like a whack job? I don't know. And frankly, I don't care. The truth is more important to me.

The broken connections are poetically heart-breaking to me. I hate seeing the way we treat other creatures as inferior or even the way we treat each other. It sickens me. We could have so much if we would simply embrace who we really are and be good to each other.

As long as we continue to label and separate each other from the “pack”, we will never reach our full potential. We will never know how fulfilling life can be when it's lived in unison. Because, my friends, we were never meant to be separate. We are one. Yes, we are individuals in some respects, but only like our fingers are individual, yet just a part of who we are.

So yes, maybe I appear to be a little crazy with my vegan “nonsense” and my habit of reaching out to strengthen those invisible threads. Maybe people who are heavily indoctrinated into this so called human society we have invented for ourselves don't get me. That's OK. I get myself. I like the way I do things. I like that I do my very best to do no harm. I like that I relate better to people like me than I do to people who think conventionally. I'm OK with that.

I wish everyone could feel the connections. Some do. As for the rest, well, I hope they come around. Mother Earth is calling to you. Are your ears, hearts and minds open enough to hear her cries?

If so, please reach out. Reach out with kindness, love and respect. Reach out with compassion and understanding. Make the connection between your individual actions and the changes that occur in the world. All of them. Connect with nature, with each other and with all the good things in the world. Strengthen your ties to Mother Earth and loosen the threads that connect you with the anger, hatred, bigotry, speciesism, greed and gluttony we have created by being “civilized”.

Take only what you need. Give back all that you can. And please, please, please, stop the violence. It breaks the connections. It's always wrong, no matter which “side” you are on. Because as long as you are on a side, you can't feel the connections that bind us all and keep us alive, thriving and joyous.

Eventually, some time before my body and my energy permanently join the natural world I came from, I hope to be connected with everything. I hope to embrace the vast unity of all nature and feel all of it's beauty. How about you?

Rapid fire vegan connections

My brain on vegan (public domain photo)

This blog is not just for my readers. It's for me too. Since I began it, my brain has been going crazy with rapid fire connections. Every time I write another post, I'm reminded of another connection to, of, about or related with veganism. It's quite exciting, really.

Why do I find connections so exciting?

The world is full of them. They are what makes us thrive, survive and click. They bring us prosperity and thankfulness. They bring us awareness, love and light. Connections are at the heart of every single thing we do, say or accomplish.

What's so special about vegan connections?

Well, vegan connections are nearly always positive. When they're not, they bring about positive change. That makes them among the best of all connections one could possibly make. In fact, every time I make a new vegan connection, something wonderful happens in my life or in my attitude or in my perspective.

Connections are freeing.

One would think that being connected to a huge network of energy, relationships, thoughts, etc. would be restricting. Actually, just the opposite is true. Connections reveal all the possible roads on can travel down and how they relate to each other. It's exciting!

I'm so glad that I started writing this blog.

So what if it doesn't make me a millionaire? Why should I care? The connections I'm making are worth far more than that. They take me on a different journey and a new reality every single day of my life. You guys, I'm so glad to be vegan. It's brought me so much more than appears on the surface. Vegan for life!

Make the kindness connection, even with ass-hats

Speak vegan with your heart! (public domain)

Just kidding of course, no one is a complete ass-hat. Everyone has some redeeming qualities. Heck, there are even vegan ass-hats. I came across a few of them the other day arguing over the definition of veganism and who was more vegan or truly vegan or the veganist person in the group. How ridiculous! The point is that as vegan, we are here to promote kindness, not hatred.

It's OK to hate the behavior.

It's alright to be mad at the way we have evolved as a species. Just try not to take it out on those who don't see the issue. Maybe they are mired in tradition. Maybe they're just not interested. Maybe they know about the impact a meat and dairy based diet has and refuse to change. Maybe they'll come around. Maybe they won't. Whatever the case, it's not right to be cruel to them. Treating these folks badly only serves to prove that vegans are just a bunch of superior ass-hats ourselves.

And speaking of vegans....

Those vegan ass-hats can be a real downer. I try my best not to be one of them. I try to promote my beliefs without jabs or sarcasm. I didn't always do that. It's gotten me into some trouble. I've lost some friends and family members because of it. The good news is that the ones I lost had already made the choice to lose me long ago. I've always been kind of different, you know? I don't think like other people and they hate that. Anyway....

Be nice to people.

It's the best way to show how much your life has improved since going vegan. It's the best advertisement we have. We want people to embrace our cause, not run from it. If we keep scaring them off, this planet and everyone on it is doomed. So, it's kind of important, you know? And maybe even more important is our unity.

Stop being mean to other vegans.

Good heavens. Some of those vegan chats, forums and comment sections are downright ugly. Why on earth are we creating categories for ourselves within the vegan community? Why are we not just happy to find like-minded people who are journeying toward full fledged veganism. Isn't that what we want? Of course it is. So stop badgering and bullying other vegans, even if they haven't quite gone full fledged vegan yet. You're not better than they are or more vegan because you have. Plus, you're making us look bad. Be nice!

Give me veggies or give me death

Veggies and fruits = life! (public domain photo)

Last post, I mentioned that the statement, “Give me veggies or give me death” is true in many ways. This post, I'd like to talk about what I meant by that, both including and aside from the obvious.

Being vegan means rejecting death and suffering for other animals

That's the obvious part. By going vegan we refuse to cause the death of other animals to produce “food” and other animal products. And yes, I know that there are some deaths related to vegetable production as well. However, those related to animal production far outweigh them.

It also means rejecting human suffering.

So much of what we grow is used in animal production that it's absolutely ludicrous. If we ate that food directly, rather than recycling it through animals, we could feed all the starving people in the world several times over. Plus, there's the issue of our life giving water supply. It takes a lot of it to feed all those animals we over-breed for food. It would go much further to water produce if we all ate a vegan diet.

Being vegan brings us good health.

When we eat more veggies we have less room for the bad stuff. Fewer people would be dying early from heart attacks and organ related diseases. It's even been proven that cancer may be linked to meat and dairy based diet. In my own life, I have seen how going vegan has improved my Lupus issues with reduced inflammation and improved circulation. I hardly need my medication any more. Soon, I may be able to go without it at all.

Eating veggies keeps the planet alive and well.

Dead zones surrounding factory farming operations have extinguished all life for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Animal waste from meat and dairy production is filling our water supply with nitrates that consume life supporting oxygen. Methane from factory farms is threatening our ozone. Farming is the number one environmental threat to this planet.

Eat your organic, GMO free fruits and veggies.

They don't fill our water supply with chemicals and waste products. They don't promote the over-breeding of animals that sets nature off balance. They don't hurt anyone. They only bring life. Choose veggies. Choose life.