People want you to do what they’re doing. It makes them feel more comfortable if you’re as fat as they are, or at least if you’re dining out together, that you eat as much as they do. Or eat the same kinds of food. Or drink the same drinks. Smoke the same cigarettes, wear the same clothes, watch the same movies. What no alcohol? A zillion stories flow and none of them are designed at that moment to make you feel good.
What, no meat? What’s an animal? You said you were animal-free, is that the same as vegan? I didn’t know milk and cheese were animals. Yeah, well if it contains the cells of an animal, it’s an animal. What’s a cell? Milk and cheese don’t have feelings. Cows can’t feel. Then why do you keep saying they’re happy? I don’t care if they’re happy or sad, I like cheese. Nobody cares, so why do you? Don’t you want a bite of my juicy steak? That’s not blood. No, it isn’t. It’s not the same thing. Cows can’t think.
What do you want a pat on the back? Pity? Everybody’s looking for pity these days, and they’re getting a shit load of it. That’s right a truckload of bull shit, human shit, chicken shit, who cares where it came from if it looks and smells like shit. It’s all a lie.
Non-vegan people say they admire vegans. No, they don’t. When you admire someone, you want to be them. You can’t, so you copy their behavior. Everybody tried to look like Marilyn Monroe. Why? Because they wanted to be like her, so they tried to look like her. People lie when they say they admire someone they don’t try to emulate. The two don’t fit.
Oh, I wish I could be a vegan, but I couldn’t.
What these people can’t do is be the outsider in the group, family, work, church, bar. When you walk in, others move away. You remind them of what they want to be but YOU CAN’T? It’s the rejection you can’t take. It’s not the food. Turn your nose up to a plant, but not to dismembering a cow and gorging on the flesh and blood?
At least be honest about it. You’ve heard what people say.
Why? You don’t care why. Because if you cared, you’d have to tell yourself the truth. And that great person you always thought you were disappears. Only for as long as it takes you to make a correction in your life, though. You can get that great person back, without cannibalizing anybody, and feel much better about confronting the WHY and acting on it.
Go ahead, give it a try, ask yourself WHY.