World Vegan Day and Remembering Where We Started

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Farm Animals, Vegan

Published November 02, 2009 @ 07:14AM PT

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Yesterday was World Vegan Day, and a lot of people took the opportunity to tell their vegan stories, to tell readers, friends, and family what led them to become vegan. I'm going to do that someday, maybe even soon, but today, I'm going to tell you about who I was and how I grew up instead.

I grew up in central-southern Illinois, in a small town surrounded by farms. My grandparents and parents ran and/or grew up on farms. My maternal grandfather is a hunter; so are some uncles and cousins on both sides of my family. My grandparents used to take me fishing every once in a while when I was a kid, and I loved those outings; at the time, it seemed something peaceful and sweet between grandparents and granddaughter, not something any of us considered a violent activity. And I didn't start thinking about what actually happens at the back of the building that greets you at the edge of town when you come in from the west until the last five or so years. For years, I've known it vaguely as the place where some people go to buy meat; it took much longer for me to register that live animals were coming in the back before packaged pieces of animals were going out the front.

I was raised on a meat-and-potatoes diet. The idea of a meal that intentionally didn't include meat (and I use the word "meat" instead of, for example, "flesh" in this post because the former is how I thought of it back then) is something that never would have occurred to my family, and the notion of going vegetarian, let alone vegan, would have been laughed right out the door during my childhood as silly and unhealthy. Not eating (or wearing or using) animals was a foreign concept where I lived. I  was perhaps even more meat-and-potatoes than my parents in some ways. Raw vegetables, for example, frequently sat in a bowl at mealtimes too -- green peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, and kohlrabi, many of these from the garden at the right times of year -- but beyond the kohlrabi, I wasn't crazy about many of these unless they came with a heavy dose of dairy-based dip. I didn't do condiments or vegetables even on my meat. My burgers: bun and burger. My sandwiches: turkey, bread, and maybe some cheese. The only meatless sandwiches I ate were grilled cheeses. If you'd suggested to me that I make a sandwich of vegetables -- if you'd suggested I make a meal without meat, cheese, cream, or eggs -- I wouldn't have known where to start. I'd have been one of those people who retorts, "Then what am I supposed to eat?"

College was worse. I lived off hamburgers, sausage links, bologna, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, fast food, and the like. I had a vegetarian friend; my roommate and best friend had been raised vegetarian by her vegetarian mother. I didn't get it. And as close as we were, she didn't ever really talk about it, perhaps because vegetarianism was more something she'd grown up with than something she'd chosen for herself and had strong beliefs about. And despite being both intelligent and compassionate -- I was the kind of person people would have told you "wouldn't hurt a fly," even though I obviously would hurt and eat animals much larger -- I was oblivious.

There was so much I didn't know or realize, and there were so many assumptions I'd wrongly made without even knowing I'd made those assumptions in the first place (you follow that?). I wasn't consciously choosing to endorse violence and cause unnecessary death and unthinkable suffering, and neither was anyone around me. In 20 years, I'd met only one true vegetarian, let alone vegan (a word whose meaning I wouldn't even learn until after my college graduation), and she didn't talk about animal issues. There had been simply no challenges to or questioning of whom -- what, in my mind -- I was eating and no information about what that entailed. Until I was 21 years old, there had been only reinforcement of how (and whom) I ate, by everyone and everything around me, and even when someone did finally bring up the topic, the message was brief and muddied.

I was a good person, in my own mind and in the ways I interacted with the people around me. I was a thoughtful friend. I'd been a volunteer for various groups or causes over the years. I cared about people. My parents and grandparents too were and are good people, who love their children, grandchildren, and each other fiercely, who try to do the right thing from day to day and year to year, who are full of gentle compassion and love. Eating animals is simply "normal" and ingrained where I come from, where most of us come from, and certainly isn't considered a barrier to being a good person. And as vegans advocating for animals, we have to remember that when deciding on our approach.

I'll tell you my vegan story another time -- the story of how I got here, the process by which my whole worldview changed. But I think it's also important for non-vegans to realize and for vegans to remember where many of us came from. The vast majority of us weren't raised vegan; very few of us were raised even vegetarian. And many of us are proof of two things: (1) Even those who seem unlikeliest to change can change and just may need information, support, compassion, and patience to get to their personal aha moment. And (2) people who eat animals aren't bad people; in most cases, they're people who just don't fully realize (if they realize at all) what they're taking part in or what choices they have -- and who also really don't know who animals are; they don't realize the thoughts, fear, joy, suffering, love, sorrow, and relationships our fellow animals experience. In many cases, they may be among the most kind-hearted people we know, and if we remember that and respect that in our discussions with them, if we keep some of our focus on all the good about them and the good they do in the world,  while also trying to help them learn about animals and what more good they could be doing, we'll be a lot more successful than if we demonize them.

When people are rude, mocking, and dismissive about animal rights and veganism, it can be difficult to keep our cool in return, to still be respectful and give them the benefit of the doubt. But finding a way to do the latter gives us a better shot of getting them to at some point really start hearing us and taking seriously what we're trying to say. Being vegan animal rights advocates can't be just about who we are, how we live, and what we know to be true now; it also has to be about remembering who we were and what we believed before, about putting ourselves back in our friends' and and family members' positions and remembering what would have gotten us thinking and feeling and what would have alienated us. It also has to be about remembering that we weren't awful, sadistic people before our view of animals and ways of living changed, and neither are most of those people we're trying to reach. I'll be the first to acknowledge that some people's antagonism and rudeness when it comes to animal rights may be too much to overcome, that there may be some people who aren't interested in respectful conversation, no matter how hard we may try. But I really do believe that they're the minority and that in most of our fellow humans, there is enormous potential for great compassion for our fellow animals just waiting to be tapped.

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Illinois farmland photo retrieved from Wikimedia Commons