Aurora's Blog

It’s Friday! Time for another veggie/vegan challenge post!

Am I becoming more compassionate? And is that gross?

I have never been a big animal lover. In fact, for the most part, I’ve been an animal avoider. I don’t want any pets. I don’t want to play with anyone else’s pets. I don’t even want to see anyone else’s pets, really.

I am not about animals.

So, when I took this vegetarian/vegan challenge, I wanted to explore it for all the other reasons.

Someone was donating to my charity of choice because I was doing this. Also, I care a lot about the environment. And I care a lot about myself, and I’ve heard that a plant-based diet is pretty good for you.

But, I have been exposed to more vegetarian/vegan people, articles, websites, memes, etc. in the last 5 months than I thought I might be in my life. And as I hear these people talk with passion about the things going on with the way we treat animals, I think… that’s kind of awful.

What does that mean?

Am I being manipulated? Am I changing? Am I going soft? Am I a bad person? I have all these confusing questions. I’m not supposed to have this bleeding heart for animals.

But then part of me thinks, “Well, what if they can feel just like we do? Just because they can’t communicate it to me in my language, doesn’t mean they don’t necessarily feel love and desire and all these things that make life interesting (and make us want to get up in the morning).”

Ugh.

I’m kind of starting to feel like Lisa Simpson in the episode where she stopped eating meat because she cared about a little lamb… Yet, as annoyed as I am with myself for feeling overly sensitive to animal needs, I think Lisa is adorable and wonderful. (And she’s totally a role model of mine – even if she is fictional, so what?)

What if I stay a vegetarian forever? What is this is who I am now?

At a semi-recent job, I was often hanging out at one of my friend’s houses because he lived right by work. It was so convenient, and we had so much fun together. So, why not? And he had cats. At first, I just kind of hoped his cats would leave me alone, but I grew to pet the cats! I fed the cats. I let a cat sleep on me!

Am I the kind of person who’s going to like cats now?

Worry not. I still don’t like dogs. That will really be a game-changer if I start petting dogs! (Eesh.) But still. I know we all change as we grow, but if I become this animal-loving vegetarian, I just feel like… am I becoming this alternate version of me that a friend from say, high school, wouldn’t even recognize?

Maybe it’s okay to change. But I feel weird about it. And I feel weird caring about animals. And I never thought there was any chance that that would be a side effect to this vegetarian challenge…

What am I doing to myself? (Aye, aye, aye, right?)