Born into an American home with a pre-set diet, I had trouble eating what people call “meat.” Something did not agree with me. I preferred cooked spinach.
Sunday food with my beloved grandparents was a mixed blessing: corn on the cob, tomatoes, potato salad or mashed potatoes, green beans, watermelon, custard pies and peach cobbler. That, and being with my grandparents, was delightful. How the chicken became part of Sunday best, I don’t really want to know. I was in conflict. I wanted to eat what my grandparents had prepared. Another part of me recoiled from the fried stuff. I struggled with eating all through college.
Friends and I canoed while in college and after. One of my friends fished and one afternoon invited us to learn. Reluctantly, I agreed. What I was seeking in our time away was peaceful meanderings around the lake, “gunnelling,” (a favorite childhood activity), great campfires and conversations. The fact that we were going fishing for a weekend did not register.
At the end of the first day, my friend was happy to have caught a lot of fish. I experienced regret. I remember little except having a wiggling fish placed into my hands from the pail. I felt its pain and then its life leaving its body. I recall little else. Did I do as instructed? Did I cook, eat? I don’t know.
I did run far into the woods and burst into tears. I felt again this life hurting and dying; I cried and cried and cried. Hours later, my friends kept calling me as dusk became dark.
Something in the woods spoke to me of connection, of our time upon earth carrying our footsteps. I walked back, dazed. I wish I could say I never ate of another being’s life again. But process isn’t like that. Nor are inner conflicts. At least, not mine.
Eventually, I was guided by wisdom. These same friends and I embarked on a six-month road trip together starting at the Rio Grande and working our way west and then north. We ate sparingly. What we ate went underground in my consciousness. I do remember the joy of berry picking in Oregon, boiling and canning them.
Eventually two of us left the road to live in a San Francisco communal home with an old college friend. There were fresh community veggie food co-ops. Eating flesh was passé. Peaches, strawberries, fresh greens, salads, rice, beans and chocolate were the norm.
I wish I had completed my conflict there. I didn’t. But that year was an interlude into living my core values, really deepening what had I had learned in college. That education is of value when woven into and instructed by the world in which we live, its times, and its call for change. Give it tribute, connect with it, and you will be taught what you are here to learn. Ignore it and you succumb to the blind numbness of habits and values not yours...old torn hand-me-downs in need of revival. In my next blog, I continue CONFESSIONS OF A VEGETARIAN. One big fish story is enough for today.
So dear reader, when did you have a defining moment that led to transformation out of conflict?
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