| A SPECIAL
WORD TO KIDS OF ALL AGES:
Be prepared for some criticism and ridicule when people find you have become interested in vegetarianism. You can simply announce you are pursuing the health benefits of a better diet and ignore the lecture you will hear about the healthiness of a meal made from the flesh of dead creatures. Be prepared for a more cruel, thoughtless and even mean spirited response if it is announced you are a vegetarian because you have concern for animals. For some reason, certain people are threatened by vegetarianism. This type of person will find it necessary to go into details about killing and devouring other creatures. They will often feign humor, but if you listen closely, you'll realize they are upset about your ethical decision. If you ever wondered about your choice of vegetarianism, contact with these cruel critics should assure you there is something powerful about your ethical and spiritual beliefs. They fear you. It's not easy to be a rebel or an individualist, but it is rewarding. Young people will often encounter opposition from adults. Males will especially be prone to adopting a macho stance about vegetarianism. Relatives, friends and even teachers may express comments that may even border on cruelty about killing and eating animals. Some will hurt your feelings with cruel remarks even as they tell you hunting, fishing and butchering are not cruel. Most are merely trying to impress you with their manliness. Some are simply sick. Some Buddhist and Hindu believers avoid meat. However, if you lived in mountainous Tibet, eating meat would be necessary for survival. Many Buddhists would eat meat if it were prepared and offered by error and would be wasted otherwise. Some very spiritual people will eat as little meat as possible. When unavoidable, they will pray for the animal before eating. They will ask for forgiveness and pray that the animal has gone to its next life and is not suffering. They will vow to do righteous things with the energy they receive from the food. It is believed that certain Native Americans would express sorrow and ask for forgiveness before hunting. One laughable argument posed by some carnivores surrounds a comparison with killing animals and killing plants. They will tell you that so-called 'studies' proved plants feel pain. Their reasoning is that it is just as wrong to eat plant material as it is to eat animals. These sad and desperate people ignore one very key fact. We generally only eat the SEEDS and FRUIT of plants. God (or nature...or both) created a system where the plants need us to eat their fruit and seeds to help spread them and guarantee the survival of their kind. When we animals eat plant products we often have them pass through our systems and get deposited in areas where they may take root and grow. Even plants we eat mostly whole are at the very END of their life cycle when we eat them. We don't eat trees that will someday be 300 years old. We eat the fruit and seeds of plants as they reach the end of their life cycles. For example, plants such as corn are basically dead as we harvest what we eat from them. We do not kill trees when we harvest the fruit and nuts from them. Fortunately, most of your family and real friends will support your life style choice and really respect what you're doing. |