Interrupted

My Life Thus Far
2015-10-13 07:25:10 (UTC)

This Vegan Life of Mine

I'm having another one of those existential crises were I don't feel like my life is reflecting my core values. I suppose that would be the exact definition of existential crisis, but whatever. I'm torn. My heart and soul wants to quit my job, open a little vegan café that serves interesting and delicious vegan dishes and baked goods. I want to have a little vegan shop that sells handmade natural products and snarky, witty t-shirts, and hippie clothes made of hemp and bamboo. Having desires like this make me feel silly. I've only been vegan for about 7 months, and yet I truly feel like it's what I'm draw to do. My true identity. I've worked at VS for so long, that it really is engrained in me. I love what I do, but I'm really struggling with the fact that VS started testing on animals. It's a recent development (because China requires animal testing before products can be sold there, and VS is wanting to move into the Chinese market), and it's honestly a HUGE step in the wrong direction. Even non-vegans are becoming more aware of the cruelty hidden behind lab walls. I hope they stop this. And yet I feel powerless to change it. Which makes me want my little vegan dream all the more. I'm the most peaceful I've been in probably my entire life. I'm so right with myself, and I attribute that in large part to being vegan.

And then the other side of the token: other vegans overwhelm me. They're militant, overbearing, pretentious, self-righteous, angry, quickly hostile, narcissistic, combative, ... I could go on. Not all are that way, but I feel like amongst all the people I'm associated with, these attributes are unfortunately very common amongst the people in my vegan Facebook groups (because I don't know any other vegans in real life. Not any that live near by). I'm not a perfect vegan (I don't do as much activism as I'm "supposed to"), but I don't make the kinds of mistakes they tend to jump all over. I watch some of the fights that go down in the groups, and I wonder if these are the types of people I want to be associated with. It saddens and confuses me. Because I love being vegan, but some vegans are just assholes. I guess this is how some Christians feel about evangelical Christians. I have done a lot to bring the idea of veganism to the attention of the people around me, but it doesn't matter to the militant vegans, because I don't yell at meat-eaters. I'm an apologist vegan. A Namaste vegan. An enabler. They say mean things about people who aren't like them, and I just don't get it. Isn't about living a cruelty free life? I am. Yet somehow I'm still not vegan enough. It almost makes me want to leave all of the groups I'm in, and just go about this vegan life of mine alone.




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