I get so angry sometimes.
Driving to lunch, there were two little birds in the road, so I slowed down to give them time to fly away. They flitted to the other side of the road, where the guy coming in that direction, who definitely had enough time to see them, promptly ran over one of them.
Granted, birds aren't the smartest, but then again, I have no idea what it's like to be that small. I mean to them, they may never see the car, like we never feel the earth moving beneath us. It's so big and they're so small. I'm not perfect. I hit a baby rabbit one time. It came out of no where, and I wasn't going that fast, but lord how I cried. There's really no helping it sometimes.
But it makes me so angry to see something like that, to know what we do to this earth and its inhabitants as humans, that if we weren't here everything would have just carried on naturally and peacefully (don't think that I think animals are all cute and fuzzy, I mean peacefully as in only kill to eat). I want to explain this to people, to make them see the world as I do, that all these concrete slabs and technologies and clear-cut suburbs don't do this earth any good, and it's the only one we have. I try to explain to people why I don't eat meat, that we're killing this earth with all our factory farms and that it's just not natural what we do to them. But people DON'T CARE. All they want is to continue doing what they've been doing because it's comfortable and they feel like they deserve it. I hear all the time "I couldn't live without meat." Yes you COULD, you just don't want to TRY because you're LAZY and WILLFULLY IGNORANT. Meanwhile farmers are tearing down the rainforest to make room for more cows, and we eat billions of cheeseburgers every day while children all over the world are starving and can't even get their hands on a little bit of grain because all the grain is being fed to these beef cows.
I'd like to say I don't have that ability-- that I can't be willfully ignorant, ignoring what I know about the way this world treats animals and going about my carnivorous business, la de da. But I eat fish, all the while knowing that we're over-fishing the oceans, and species like the dolphins are suffering and dying at the hands of these fishers. But I eat it anyway because I don't want to piss off my friends anymore than I already have by refusing certain restaurants or making them make special arrangements for me when we cook. I have no easy answer there, and honestly sometimes I feel like I've given up enough and deserve at least a little bit of comfort.
Some days I just feel like I'm at my wits end, that if I see one more cruel act, human to human or human to animal, I may just lose it altogether. I can't watch the news, for sure. It's always in my brain, even when I'm buying shampoo. It's too much but it's in there now and I can't be any more willfully ignorant than I already am without losing my sense of peace and wholeness with this world. I just wish more people knew what that felt like and strove for it the way I have.
Today is one of those days. So I had another cupcake. It was vegetarian, but I still feel sick to my stomach.
If you want more info on where your food comes from (no terrible pictures on these pages, I promise, unless you click on a link within the website-- then, no promises, but you should know):
http://www.idausa.org/facts/factoryfarmfacts.html
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/
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