I'm almost a vegetarian for 1 year now. The transition of eating meat to absolutely nothing, was not difficult. Also I feel not better or worse. I go to the doctor once in a while to test my blood and i'm still a very healthy person. The reason that I stopped eating meat was not to improve my health or because I didn't like the taste of it.
I stopped because i suddenly felt a fundamental respect for life.
I'll make myself clear:
Around this time last year I didn't feel good. I was thinking all the time about my existence. Why am I here? What am I doing? What is my purpose? I couldn't find answers. I already lost faith in God a long time ago. I was sure that a superior force high in the sky was non-existent. So I started to read philosophy, in the hope to find answers there. Off the record: I'm absolutely not an expert in philosophy but I want to share one quote of Spinoza that helped me a lot. Spinoza said: 'everything is god'. That means that i am god, you are god, a horse is god, also a rock is god or a chair, or a closet, and so on... God is nature and everything is nature. That means that you take away the hierarchy of substances... I don't have more value as other substances. It means that everything that exists has value or no value or at least not more value than i have. This thought didn't make me worship a rock or a closet but it let me feel at least connected with everything that is vulnerable/ everything that lives/ everything that is considered as nature.
I also saw a documentary about evolution. Apparently our DNA is similar to the DNA of everything that exists. For example our DNA has similarities to the DNA of a tree. But that means if you go long enough back in time we all have the same father (or mother) and that would be stardust. Thats amazing!!! Also here: I'm not an expert or a biologist, but this thought also makes me respect more the life, our planet and our universe because we have connections that are real, and even visible in the DNA.
Later i read a book written by the american psychiatrist Irvin Yalom. The title of the book is: staring into the sun. It's a book about overcoming death. It's intens to read but it helped me to accept that there is nothing more than life itself. Irvin Yalom describes life as the sparkle between to dark voids. These two dark voids are the time before our birth and the time after we die. Yalom doesn't believe in the afterlife. He thinks that after live you become absolutely nothing, like when before you were born. The death is necessary for life. It gives life value. I often ask to people to choose between two roses. 1 rose is artificial. It lives forever. You don't have to give it water or take care of it. Even if you pull out the leafs they grow back without a problem. The other rose is vulnerable. And dies, if you don't give it water. It dies eventually because it can't live forever. If I ask people which rose they prefer, they prefer the rose that dies. Why?....
Because the death and vulnerability of the rose inlightness the beauty of living. The rose is more beautiful because it's vulnerability. We have to care about that rose because otherwise it dies. So the death and vulnerability is the incentive of caring.... Looking to the death gave me more respect for life, not only human life, but everything that is vulnerable and eventually dies.
So to summarize: 3 thoughts let me respect all life even more
- Spinoza: everything is nature
- The documentary: we all have the same father
- Irvin Yalom: staring in to the sun (death)
But that only explains that I respect life not why I am a vegetarian. Well being a vegetarian is for me a way to respect life. That means more than only the human life. It means the life of our planet, our fauna and flora. Ideologically I should be vegan but I love cheese too much hahaha ;). I truly believe though that being vegetarian is good for nature and i base myself on another documentary that i watched about the consequences for our nature and planet of eating meat. I recommend you to watch the documentary
'Cowsparicy':
To end I want to say that my way of living is my way of living. How other people live thats their choice and i will be the last one to judge about. If you want to eat meat thats your responsibility and even your right to do that.
Next week there will be recipes coming up to cook delicious, easy to make, vegetarian dishes. If you are interested don't hesitate to follow me. The picture below is a preview of what is coming up!).
Hasta la proxima
Tom