Something has hit me again in recent days, or weeks, about the prospect of returning to a vegetarian diet. I was a vegetarian for, I don't know, maybe a decade (I even inspired a few other people to adopt the diet, one of whom now considers me a sort of "traitor to the cause" because of my 180 after I got him to stop eating meat), and I did it for ethical reasons, primarily; I love animals, I grew up with a fairly motley assortment (the requisite dogs n' cats, a couple of goldfish, hamsters, pastel candy-colored budgies, even a salamander from our own backyard that escaped its "pen" and which I eventually found, dried up in a dust bunny in a corner of the living room; I also later learned their skin has a sort of poison in it, much like toads, but luckily I never actually touched it), and I was always rescuing them, like stray dogs and hurt Mockingbirds, all of it. So it stood to reason that consuming them was antithesis to this big-hearted Florence Nightengale-of-Animals thing I had going.
Not to mention, I was also pretty militant about not eating meat and proudly wore my PETA t-shirt everywhere.
That changed when I tried to give blood after 9/11 and watched the iron-poor blood droplet fall from my pricked fingertip and drift, weakly and lazily down to the bottom of a glass of water, while my friend's rich blood plummeted like an anchor. My blood was declined, so while my friend continued with her donation, I promptly left the bloodbank and crossed the street to the burger joint to chow down, a gesture which effectively positioned me in the world as a carnivore from that point on.
I still wore the PETA t-shirt, but only to sleep in.
Lately, though, it's been the growing awareness not just of global warming and the terrible, horrible impact cows have on the environment (read about it sometime, go on), and the fact we're a big, fat, sick nation with heart trouble and colon cancer and joint diseases and raging hormonal imbalances and gout, but the fact that, at 41, I've recently noticed a soreness in a couple of knuckles on my hands (ah, God, this "aging" thing!), which I'm assuming is the onset of arthritis, exacerbated by the cold, cold weather.
Now, the American Way is to say, "Aw, give me a shot o' cortisone or some pills or a smear of Ben-Gay," etc. in an effort to control the symptoms, but that's lazy. That's uninformed and really, terribly unenlightened. My first thought was, oh, shit. My DIET.
Even now, I don't eat that much meat, but I crave it and when I want it, I have it. Which is, I don't know, once every couple of weeks, I suppose, and probably in conjunction with the ebb and flow of my cycle.
I was sharing this renewed mindset with a Buddhist friend of mine today, a years-long vegetarian who listed the reasons to not eat meat:
"Ahimsa," which means non-violence;
Health;
Spirituality;
Environment.
Who can argue with that? I just think I'm "there" again, for whatever inspecific or specific reasons. I love cooking, and I'm no longer completely unconscious about food and what it does to your body (no, I haven't had a bowl of Cap'n Crunch for at least 20 years), I generally make much better choices now (although last Friday was a riot of Tater-Tots, gloppy pasteurized cheese dip, kosher hot dogs and hard cider at a happy hour with a friend of mine, for which I paid dearly the next morning), and I'm generally conscious of keeping my iron levels respectable. And I guess I do feel that part of "paying rent" on the planet means being conscious of my own impact on it.
There is a saying that goes, "Live simply, that others may simply live," and when I think about how ridiculously indulgent and overly-rich (in all ways) and self-centered and indifferent the Western Mindset generally is (and our meat-centric diet is part of that), I kind of shudder. I think it'll be a process for me, though, because having grown up in proximity to the Pacific Ocean, I do love seafood, and certain habits are ridiculously hard to break.
And I have a honkin' frozen turkey breast in the freezer. Sigh.
But the thinking, the renewed consciousness, is a beginning, again, and a great one. For me. And I'm excited about it, as if I'm slowly reawakening after a long, long snooze.
As they say in the program, One Day at a Time. Oh, and Live and Let Live. Which, I think, even applies to animals.
Ahimsa.
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