13 12 / 2011
Okay vegetarians/vegans…
Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to becoming a vegetarian/vegan. I say it like that because if I were to do it the plan would be to cut out meat completely and then over time phase out other animal products gradually. I know myself too well to think I could just wake up one day and be a successful vegan.
Being a vegetarian is something I’ve thought about my whole life. I made several attempts at it from around 7 - 12 (having never been much of a meat-eater anyway), but my family was definitely not terribly supportive of the idea, and I lacked the discipline at that age. It’s always been in the back of my mind, and lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot more seriously. My main motivation would be not contributing the unethical treatment of animals, but the health benefits are definitely helping to encourage me. I haven’t been taking very good care of myself lately.
I know several of my followers are vegetarian or vegan: do you have any advice? Any resources you think might help? As appealing as it is I’m sort of at a loss for how to start. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like it would make my life complicated in a lot more ways.
For one thing, my husband is not and will never be a vegetarian. So it seems like if I were to go vegetarian I would still be contributing to the unnecessarily cruel treatment of animals. There would still be meat being cooked in my house. I know I could at least stop cooking meat for my hubby (and I do most of the cooking), but it just seems…complicated. And then if I were to go vegan there’s a whole slew of other problems. Like giving up leather. This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t already own any, but I do. My car has leather seats - getting a new car isn’t going to be feasible any time in the next few years, so even if I made the transition to vegan I’d still be driving around on leather and that certainly seems hypocritical. I have an amazing purse that my husband bought me that is made of leather, and I don’t think I could ever give up using it. It’s one of a kind, and I lusted over it for months (because of the design more than the material), and he surprised me with it only after listening to me swear up and down that if I ever had a bag like that I wouldn’t need another one again. I’m not terribly materialistic - I have a leather jacket I’d be happy to get rid of - but something like that with sentimental value would be much harder to get rid of.
So then I think that I COULD settle for simply being a vegetarian, but if the whole reason for cutting meat from my diet is based on how animals are treated it seems hypocritical to still use other animal products. Can I justify keeping the leather since the animals are already dead? That really doesn’t seem any better to me, even though I know I’ve seen people use that excuse to justify wearing recycled leathers.
So that’s pretty much the conundrum. Help me out?
The big thing to remember is that this isn’t an all-or-nothing sort of deal. If you decide morally and ethically that eating animals isn’t for you, then stop eating them. I don’t think you need to give up things you already own, after all -the damage was done in those cases. But going forward, think of all the animals that won’t have to die just so YOU can eat them.
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