What I am Thinking and Why I became a Vegetarian

Life / Value / Judgement 

This little one is still alive, and I hope he will live forever

(in a selfish way)

I lost my little puppy last year, and my mind changed a lot since then (sound too dramatic but true, haha). It has been a time when I stay up all night can’t stop thinking of him. Is he living happily in heaven? Would he blame me for not doing enough for him? Is he missing me too? Or, does heaven even exist? Then I convince myself I probably should stop being stupid, I cannot do a thing right now so why should I still blame myself with the things we all couldn't do? 

I started to think, again, what could I help? Besides from being thankful and to treasure everything around me. What else can I do to save some ‘little life’? Stop one from being sad of losing something? (Gone too far)

And I decided to stop eating animals.

I do not think anyone would have the ‘right’ to judge life. Or to take away one’s life. I’m not saying eating meat is wrong (because that is not fair and would be a way of me judging people). I’m writing because I consider life as a ‘big thing’, and something can be changed, in a better way. Not telling anyone to stop eating meat but to think deeper, before enjoying your meals.

Back to the far far beginning, back to the history, why do we kill animals? Because we didn’t have choice, we needed to survive, we needed to protect ourselves from the beasts; we needed to eat in order to maintain our life. I understand that, but we are no longer hunter-gatherers. Most of us are lucky, we do not have to worry about running from the beasts, or have no food to eat (In fact we, human is more scary in a way). We have choices, and we have too much.

What makes us think we have the ‘right’ or ‘power’ to kill animals? One may say, because we born to be more clever and creative, we think, we do things that other animals can’t do, we dominate over others, we contribute, we have moral and standard, we are special. Pig didn’t choose to be a pig, life chooses them. Each one of us has only one life, and so as the others. What is the different? How can we eat animal because we think our life is more valuable? How do we define value? How do we measure contribution? How do we know they are not contributing in their own way?

And on top of that, because we have moral and standard, because we can think more than all of the others, we should not kill or eat them. What would you feel if someone close to you died? I cried 2 weeks when my dog passed away. Our life is equal; every life is here for a reason, not for us to eat. What if the role goes the other way around, what if we are the prey? How about that? (that will be pretty funny)

And you may think, even if I stop eating animal now, majority of people do, it wouldn’t help. But the thing is, everyone on earth count. One more person stop eating meat, its one (plus me is two, plus all the other vegetarians out there is countless) Maybe, not every vegetarian would think the same way as I do, but I don’t care, a lot more lives survived after all.

Human body actually do not require much nutrition from meat to run.  Especially us, people in the developed world. Meat mainly contains protein, iron, fats and vitamins, and all this nutrition can be found in lots other food we eat daily. Protein, which is essential to our body to repair and build cells. We can get protein through other food such as nuts, eggs, dairy food, soya etc. Iron, which helps carry oxygen throughout our body and helps building red blood cells, can be founded in pulses, nuts, green leaf vegetables, seeds and more. Vitamins, from all the fruits and vegetables, and everything we eat. And finally, fats, meat contains saturated fat, which is not healthy for human body. Saturated fat increases the cholesterol in blood that can leads to heart disease. So, what do we eat meat for?

And stop eating meat for environmental reasons; the media has been widely reporting the relationship between meat eating and global warming, which because meat causes greenhouse gases carbon dioxide. I thing every one of us has heard about that.

Another thing is, it’s not that hard to stop eating meat. You might like eating them a lot that you think you cannot survive without eating it, and that is exactly what stops you. Stop thinking, and start trying. You will be surprised by the things you can do.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘life’ lately, because I love my little puppy, everyone around me, now and before. I’m scared of losing things, anything. And everything is life, the reindeers running in Scotland; the birds that usually sleep on the tree outside of my window; the little ladybug fell on my hair today; your loved one; and all the others you put in your dishes everyday.

Everything is life, and life makes up this world (sometime I even think I should stop eating plants as well, because ‘they’ are life in a way, someone please answer me if I should still consider myself as vegetarian if I eat plants, or should I be a ‘non-life eater’ (??), this confuse me a lot). Because I treasure everything that makes up this world, even if someone told me I’m too stupid to save a spider in my bathroom. (I cried a whole night when I was using a cup to ‘remove’ the spider from my bathroom I accidentally broke one of its legs because I’m too scared of bugs and the spider is too scared of me.) They don’t understand, and they think I’m stupid even I explain to them. But it wouldn’t be fair if I judge life in my own perspective, wouldn’t be fair to anything that has only one life (excepting you have two). This is just my own opinion after all.

I hope if anyone is reading this, please think, think of the value of life and how we have been told to value things.  (Even if no one is reading this, I feel better because I finally expressed myself)

____ asks me, why did I stop eating animal?
Someone has loved you, and now it’s time to pay it back.