Vegetarianism
About vegetarianism reasons that counted for me

Like the average Dutch person I grew up in a normal meat-eating family. I liked eating meat and didn’t give it much thought.
This changed slowly as I was reading more and more on why many spiritual leaders (among whom Gandhi ) are in favor of a vegetarian diet.
In the years before 2001 I often struggled with the thought that it wasn’t right (for me) to eat meat, but still I liked the taste too much to give it up. Also I kept telling myself that I was just not living in the right society. I knew no vegetarians around me and to become vegetarian would be quite a statement and a lot of hassle.

Then one day the “mad cow disease” reached my country. In every stable where the disease was discovered all the cows would be killed. On television they showed daily, how the dead body’s would be picked up by construction machines and thrown into a truck to be disposed for waste.
It was kind of shocking to see and I exposed myself to it purposefully, knowing that this was strengthening me to become vegetarian.

The last thing I needed before making the bold statement that “starting today I would be vegetarian” was the description from Mansukh Patel of how animals are treated in a slaughter house. He also talked about their fear and how any educated human-being should be able to understand that this energy-of-fear would stay in the meat that we are eating. That made sense to me. On a spiritual level meat-eating could not be healthy.

These days my main reason for being vegetarian is that I believe that it just cannot be right to kill a living being for nothing less than a slight enjoyment.
I just see no balance there. Sometimes my actions might harm other living beings, but this will be because I have no other choice or because my benefit exceeds their discomfort.
But to kill simply because I like the taste of something, seems very weird and not human to me.

Till today I know only few other vegetarians. When meeting a new person, I do not expect them to be vegetarian (or expect them to become vegetarian). Everyone has to make their own decision on this.
It is my belief that people who eat meat are just not fully realizing what they are doing. Sure, they know that meat is a dead animal, but they do not fully realize it. Sometimes they are even denying it.
They will say that they have not been the one killing the animal and also when they bought the meat the animal was already dead, so they anyways couldn’t save it anymore.
It is their choice to live from these beliefs and I will not judge. You can be as much my friend when you are vegetarian as when you are not.

Elisa ( Twitter-alias: Elisa_507 )

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