My mother says I ate cockroaches when I was a baby, apparently she found one squirming in my mouth one day. Apart from my attraction to insects, I did have a strangely comfortable relationship with animals and I still do.
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My mother says I ate cockroaches when I was a baby, apparently she found one squirming in my mouth one day. Apart from my attraction to insects, I did have a strangely comfortable relationship with animals and I still do.
I was always terriblly cruel to insects as a kid, and I suppose I just never made the connection between a living cow or pig and beef or ham until later. I devoted my life to helping people before I was vegetarian, and I still feel deeply for those less fortunate than us, but I've extended that compassion to animals as well after witnessing something I won't go into. I love my dogs, they're both really cool guys that needed a home, and even though they'll die eventually, at least they had a loving friend and a full belly. Damn it now I'm crying, and I'm supposed to be this manly bearded guy that listens to metal lol
And yeah I can totally relate, vava. We' re not overthinking though, everyone else just isn't thinking enough :)
I can relate to a lot of you. I too was and am very sensitive.
I also overthink things. And nothing gets me truly mad, except injustice.
I have always had a strong fove for animals. As a child my parent killed their own animals (chickens, turkeys, rabbits,...) and brought a beloved pet to a shelter, drowned mice,.... You name it, quite a farmer's mentallity. And those were all things that deeply, very deeply hurt me. I caried the hurt with me for a very long time.
I became a vegetarian age 13.
And I will tell you that the way my parents deal with their pets is now totally different. It is not totally the way I would like. But it proves to me everybody can change:)
Meditaion helps with overthinking for me;)
I think if there were one defining feature of my character a desire for justice would be it. before I could even talk a boy blamed my sister for something he had done to try and get her into trouble (sister is 2 years older than me, boy was 3 years older than me). Because I couldn't talk I just pointed at him and backed him into the corner shaking my finger at him, he ended up crying!
I am so hung up on the potential for justice in the world that I really want to call my child Justice if I have a daughter, so much so that even if it is a boy he might get justice as a middle name!
I remember my brother doing chicken impersonations when I was about 4. It was when we went to bed and he had no clothes on he pretended to be the dead chicken we had eaten. Pretty much around that time I had a dream where my family got cut up into meat chunks by giants (luckily I was magical and could put them together again) so I got the relationship between animals and humans pretty early but I think not knowing there was an alternative to eating animals, until I was 16 and had a veggie Hindu friend, I found it difficult to rebel against my parents. I also decided aged 11 to try and love everyone even if I found it difficult to like them (I have Pollyanna tendencies) I wasn't a great animal lover as a kid though. I couldn't understand why adults went soppy over cats but ignored their kids. Now I have cat freinds I can understand the attachment which makes it even harder to understand how so many people call themselves animal lovers and yet are happy to ignore the cruelty their lifestyles inflict on animals.
I am like a few peeps on this thread and have a tendency overthink things (great for problem solving - crap for relationships) and used to cry if other kids got told off, so pretty empathic I guess.
BTW Cherry the image of you patting flowers is the cutest!
+1
So so true. That bothers me a lot as well. When my sister says things like that I sometimes say "you love the cute ones" (though how people don't find cows and pigs cute is beyond me.. I saw a chicken on one of those vet/animal hospital shows last night who was such a cutie too).
Can totally relate to everyone mentioning how sensitive they are. Over-thinking things (or obsessing is how I usually look at it) sucks. I think apart from the aspects of this that drive us crazy, there's also good things though: the ability to sincerely take into account how other people are feeling, basing decisions on that is a nice thing to do.
Token weird childhood insect story that pops to mind: flicking an ant on the coffee table one day, and then seeing it sorta wriggling around in a painful way made me feel SO guilty. So for some reason I decided it needed to be in an "incubator" which I fashioned out of a torch ... (yeah, not a lot of logic in it really) and then tried to nurse the ant back to health by offering tiny breadcrumbs and a few bits of sugar. I think the ant ended up doing ok? Probably it wasn't really injured too badly in the first place, maybe just a bit stunned, and it came right on it's own. :rolleyes:
haha, the headline is misleading because what the article is actually saying is that the brain requires additional glucose intake after thinking, and as long as you eat the right foods you can replace the energy required without 'getting fat'. :rolleyes: but that wouldn't make people read the article i guess :p
:)
Well, back when I used to live in Guatemala I was about 4 or 5, and all the neighbors around my age were boys...evil boys. Once I remember that there was this grasshopper just sitting on a wall belonging to a store next to my house, and I was looking at it and just contemplating it, and all of a sudden they noticed that I was looking up there so they all came and started trying to catch it to kill it, and they even took off their SHOES trying to smack it, and I was sooo upset I was screaming and trying to stop them, and when they just pushed me away I remember just crying and realizing how evil people were... The grasshopper hadn't done anything to them and they wanted to kill it just because they felt like it.
Growing up we had 2 dogs and I was always an animal lover. My parents had to ban me watching lassie at one stage as I used to be heartbroken watching it!! Likewise, my mum reclals that as soon as I could speak I was asking aobut eggs and whether they were chickens babies we were eating? She was not suprised to see my meat intake reduce over the years and me get picky with meat and eventually become veggie at age 15. I stopped eating eggs soon after but didn't become vegan until 15 years later :eek: purely because I have over the years learned to aovid all literature concerned with animal cruelty (what I don't know doesn't hurt me) and had only started really thinking aobut some issues that eventually led to me becoming vegan, after having a baby and breast feeding him for 12 months.
My brother, on the other hand would often pick up our dog by the ears ( :( ) and never showed much interest in nature/animals and is a big meat eater now. My husband never had pets growing up, is scared of dogs, would happily kill insects to remove them from the house if I wasn't in, considers himself a big meat eater (but actually eats vegan at home). My dad always watched nature programmes and is a big animal lover, but unfortunately also a big animal eater!?! My mum has always been very indifferent towards meat but when I talk aobut my reasons for being vegan says she has no real understanding of why one would want to avoid all dairy and has no interest really in reducing animal cruelty as far as diet is concerned (really doesn't affect her) but I'd dare to suggest that she'd be pretty upset if she saw a domestic pet being mistreated :(
So, my long winded response to the original question is that I do believe, for whatever reasons, that I was more aware of issues of animal cruelty etc from an early age, which makes veganism so 'normal' to me now, whereas others, including my brother and husband, have never really been 'affected' or 'concerned' by animal cruelty and changing their diet (never mind any other aspects to their lifestyle) is the last thing on their minds, especially since they really enjoy the taste of meat/dairy.
I am however also the kind of person to see/look for the good in people and and i guess my work reflects this aswell, although an article of animal abuse (and dealing with animal abuse through my job) is more likely to affect me than articles of child abuse (although less so now I'm a mum), which I hate to admit tbh....
This thread is awesome...just this morning we had a big rain. I walked out to the car and saw a bunch of worms in the parking lot. I actually made note of where the worms were on the ground and drove my car around as many as I could.
I tend to like animals more than humans most of the time. ;)
I've always been around animals at home. I had two dogs and a turtle when I was little and I cried a lot when my dogs died. My family are also "animal lovers", but they eat them because they don't want to change their habits.
I've always been happier around puppies or kittens than around babies, I don't know why, it's just the way I feel. But I didn't become vegan only for my love of animals, but for a sense of justice. It is unfair what we are doing to other species and I don't want to be part of it, as simple as that. I try to avoid others suffering as much as possible, and there's no better way than being a vegan.
My dad did things similar to this, like with burning up ants and such, but as he grew older grew an appreciation for the natural world and now when there's a spider or other animal tries to either leave alone or to move outside. I think he started changing around teenage years.
Myself I've always been very sensitive to such suffering, and recall stopping a girl scout from stomping on a grass hopper the day we were learning about reading music notes. I seem to connect with many invertebrates and dogs. :)
What do we have in common?
The fact that we each call ourselves 'vegan'.
Of course what we mean by 'vegan', seems to have a very diverse interpretation.
Just because we want to have things in common, presumably to feel some kind of solidarity, does not I'm afraid, make it so.
Sorry to be a party-pooper.
leedsveg :confused:
I think we do seem to share a more compassionate side to our personalities.:) I have met quite a few vegans from the forum and in general they are a really kind group of people. I was saying to another VF'er the other day that I genuinely like the majority of the people I have met (and that is quite unusual for me!:amazed_ani::D)
I used to love animals when I was younger and bonded better with our companion non human animals than with human animals. I still do love animals mind... In fact, sometimes prefer non human company to human company when I can get it.
I think I became vegan before I really became in to the whole culture of peace and animal rights. I think veganism has made me more gentle and sensitive too.
My Mum was never allowed to live with non human animals, so she allowed it with my brother and I... Hence we shared our youth with rodents, reptiles, canines, a wonderful feline and stick insects! I don't know if I would keep a caged animal again, mind.
I don't really know many people off VF, just two personally (and hope to get to know more). Most vegans I know tend to be very gentle and compassionate people, intelligent and open minded. I have only met a couple of 'pushy'/militant vegans.