What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

I now teter on the edge of an enormous lifestyle change. It’s a change I’ve been toying with for months now, ever since running across vegan . Yes, I’ve even toyed with the idea off and on for most of my adult life. I’ve not visited 'the vegan guy’s' blog too often – he often forces me to consider the barbarism of the modern meat industry. Which is something I’d really rather not have to do as I inhale my spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s.

Sadly, everything about our modern American society revolves around money. I dare say this country’s greed and arrogance, as with so many other great world powers before us, will surely be its downfall – not terrorism, not communism or any other ism, not religion or the lack thereof, not the Republicans or the Democrats, not a race war, not natural disaster, not an epidemic or a modern plague – just plain, simple greed and arrogance.

Modern America is run by and for big corporate business. Good, old-fashioned mammon – politicians bow to it, corporations bow to it, individuals bow to it, the world bows to it. Money means power in this world. Without it, you are nothing, nor do you matter to those who have it, lest you be a write off on their taxes by a pittance of an offering from the abundance of their income.

The food industry is like all others in this world, utterly corrupt. Make more money, gain more power, at any cost. Health and well-being of the individual is nothing. Cruelty and pain mean nothing. The raping of a planet with limited resources is of no concern. Hell, the destruction of the very air we breathe is of little concern. Perhaps there was a time and day in human history when eating meat was nothing more than causing pain to the chosen animal. The hunter killed as swiftly and as effectively as possible, and used what he killed – meat for food, hide and fur for necessary clothing. Not today.

Today, animals are raised in horrendous conditions to serve the vanity of man, not necessity. Cattle and poultry are no longer raised on pure plains grasses and grains, but in filthy pens, boxes and cages, with feeds manufactured from the remains of other animals’ leftover body parts, supplemented with chemicals from feed treatments to prevent spoilage from the unnatural conditions of its manufacture; supplemented with drugs to prevent disease and infection in the livestock, again, necessitated by the unnatural conditions in which they are raised and slaughtered.

I know these things. We all do. We just choose to ignore it because we want what we want. But isn’t that how we got to such a place in human history to begin with? Isn’t it greed that wants what it wants, regardless of how it has to obtain it? Isn’t it arrogance that ignores the shameful realities of greed’s methods, that it may have what it desires, regardless of cost?

Now you would think that an old hippie, lover of all things living, and critter fanatic such as myself, would’ve long ago become a vegetarian, but it’s really funny how we can make excuses for not doing the things that require something of us, when it violates our comfort too deeply. But even if one is not appalled at the cruelty suffered by much our livestock at the hands of the modern food industry, you would think our greed for our own well being would be enough to motivate a change in our dietary lifestyle.

Well, when you get to be middle-aged and you begin to reap the consequences of choices made in earlier years when the strength of youth alone was sufficient to disguise your own abuses to your physical organism, you’re really forced to re-evaluate such things with much greater concern. When you start getting deathly ill at every turn, you’ve really got to start asking yourself some serious questions, like what am I doing to bring this on? How am I weakening this organism? Or better yet, what can I DO or STOP doing to get this thing turned around! SOMEthing is most definitely out of balance here, out of the natural order of things! I can’t take care of an ailing, aging parent, raise an ADHD 10 year-old child with a troubled family history and emotional challenges, take care of a home and farm and hold down a full-time job…BY MYSELF…if I’m going to spend every day off wallowing sick in bed or on sofa! And the worse thing is, there is no one to take care of ME when I get sick. And no one to take care of everyone and everything else I’m supposed to take care of when I can’t. I simply can’t afford the common ‘luxury’ of sickness or weakness.

Yes, I think I’m ready to take on the challenge…I’m going to become a vegetarian. How long it will take me to make this transition I cannot say. How many times I may fall off this wagon, I cannot predict. No doubt, I will be mocked and ridiculed for yet another ‘diet’ attempt that everyone will expect to fail – but of course those that would mock me are not the ones spending repeated weekends and vacations on their sickbeds either.

I can’t change this world and make it a better place, a gentler place, a kinder place or a more peaceful and harmonious place with one rant…or even 1,000 – no one can. What we CAN do, is change it, one person at a time by bringing our OWN lives into greater harmony first, within ourselves, and then, with our environment.

Now, as for sushi…I’ll have to put a little extra effort into that. It’s expensive in these parts so I can’t afford to go out and eat it often. (Well, what really makes it expensive is that I get about 3-4 orders of it an one time when I go out to eat it – and STILL leave wanting MORE!). Perhaps considering the infrequency with which I can eat sushi, I could make an exception for that…

OK, OK! I’m in TRANSITION remember?!