Eating outside the box

What is it with people’s reaction to my vegetarianism? I live in Santa Cruz, California, probably the most liberal place I’ve ever lived. There are entire restaurants and grocery stores devoted to vegetarianism and natural eating. However, when my eating habits come up, I’m quite often met with shock and awe. And lots of blurted reactions like these:

“Oh my god, what about your protein? You can’t get all your protein just through vegetables.”

“I love the taste of meat. I could never live without a cheeseburger.”

“Vegetarianism is so unhealthy, and I never feel full just eating salads.”

That last one always cracks me up. Who says vegetarianism is limited to just salads? And as for the protein issue, I think that just stems from plain old “lack of information.” Animal protein is important because it offers complete protein, a source containing all the amino acids our body needs. However, you can easily make up for that by combining complimentary proteins (nuts, grains, legumes). Also, soy has the nutritional value of animal protein, along with complex carbohydrates, Omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamins and minerals such as calcium, folate and iron. Soy is often referred to as a “super food,” unless you’re my husband and you’re allergic to it.

Most new or would-be vegetarians spend a lot of time convinced they couldn’t live without a good old fashioned cheeseburger or hot dog. Who could blame them? Almost everyone can think back on fond, meaty childhood memories. For me, it was Dodger Dogs and my Dad’s BBQ. Fortunately for these folks, there are companies like Morning Star whom make faux meat, made mostly of soy, that taste incredibly life-like. “I actually have to check and make sure there’s no chicken in my chicken nuggets,” a friend once said.

However, vegetarians should be aware that just because soy product shaped like a hot dog doesn’t have meat, that doesn’t necessarily make it much healthier than a hot dog. Soy products are often heavily processed and pumped with various not-so-happy additives. A lot of terrible illnesses such as heart disease and cancer are being directly related to the chemicals we pump into our food. I once heard a doctor rant on the radio, “We brush our teeth with chemicals, we wash our hair with chemicals, we eat food injected with chemicals- and we’re wondering why we’re getting sick?”

I believe that, whether you’re a meat-eater or not, the most important food choice you can make is organic. As for why I personally chose a vegetarian path? That goes back to my teens, and has changed dramatically over the years. For me, at this point in my life, I choose to eat proudly vegetarian because I have a reverence for life; all life, not just human life. I do not believe that humans are a superior species simply because we’re humans. Look what we’ve done to our planet. Look what we’ve done to ourselves. Humans are blessed with intelligence and ability, but depending on how you look at it, we’ve also been cursed with it. We have so much power and potential, and so much of it has gone to personal gain and greed. So much so, that its become ingrained within us, embedded in our culture and psyche and considered quite normal.

I once worked in a group home for kids and teens. There was a boy there, quiet and shy, with an enormous capacity for love. So I was shocked one day when I heard him speak about how he used to beat his dog when he was angry with it.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“What?” He shrugged innocently, “She doesn’t feel it.”

Where did he learn that animals actually don't feel pain? Have our human egos become so inflated that we do not recognize when we inflict pain on another creature, simply because it does not say ‘ouch’? Other beings feel pain. Real pain. And when we knowingly inflict it upon them, that energy comes right back to us. A rule I like to live by is found in the Wiccan Rede, “An it harm none, do what ye will.” In other words, live your life and live it well, but be mindful of how your actions affect everyone and everything around you. No matter how small.

Life these days

I've been a newlywed for five months now. Does that still classify me as a newlywed? Husband and I seemed to mold into our roles as married folk easily enough; I naturally love to do homey housewife things that I swore I'd never do, i.e. spend my free time cooking and cleaning. There is something oddly magical about being domestic, something familiar and beautiful that I didn't expect. I love my home. Perhaps it's the enormity of change from our prior living situation (sharing a house with five other people. None of whom were relateable or particularly likable to us). Now, I'm just so grateful for what we have. I love our studio apartment with its eclectic, miss-matching furnishings. I love our patio that gets pine needles dumped on it the second Husband sweeps it. I even love the mossy, sun-slurping tree that dumps.

My life has so dramatically, unrelentingly changed this past year. It's unbelievable. Last night, I was getting ready for bed when Husband stopped me and held me by the shoulders at arms length, studying me like a scientist. Finally, he voiced it, "You're so grown up..." He almost got a little teary-eyed, as if I were heading off to kindergarten all by myself.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, think about where you were this time last year."

I did. In fact, I do, all the time. This time last year, I was couch surfing in Southern California, oblivious to what I know now, living from moment to moment as if there would be no tomorrow. If I had kept it up, perhaps there wouldn't have been. It can be a little hard to think about. When I look back on myself just a short year ago, I see a lost, scared girl. A desperate human. There is nothing scarier than a desperate human. Wars are started by desperate humans.

That's not to say I've got it all together now, my growing is done, and I'm ready for my graduate certificate. That won't happen until I'm on my death bed. As for being a newlywed, I'll admit, though I was expecting a period of adjustment, I was still wholly unprepared. It doesn't matter how long you've known your partner or lived together, married life is different than dating life, even engagement life. Perhaps it doesn't help that Husband and I moved at warp speed. We lived on opposite ends of the state. I quit my job and moved in with him, a few months later we were engaged, and minute after that, we were married. All within less than a year.

That seems so unspeakably strange to me, as we both come from families of divorce, and marriage for me wasn't even a question. I had resigned myself to a life of bachelorettehood years ago. I even wrote a college paper about how marriage was an "outdated social institution" that should be forgotten. My professor laughed and said, "I had a student just like you who wrote the same thing. A few months later, she was engaged."

I scoffed at that poor, misguided student. She couldn't stick by her beliefs! That would never happen to me...

Loving and letting go

Having recently moved into a place all our own, Husband and I knew it was time to finally get a cat or a dog. We both love animals, and I was beginning to sorely miss having a four-legged friend around. The lion happens to be both of our power animal, so it’s very fitting that we would get a cat as our first pet together.

We knew that whatever animal we ended up with, it had to be adopted, and we wanted one with special needs that had a lesser chance of finding a home. Husband and I both made our careers helping people with disabilities, so it felt natural to adopt an animal with a disability, too. I was hoping to find one that we could turn into a therapy pet.

We spent more time looking for the perfect cat than we did for our apartment. One day at an adoption corner in Petsmart, something caught Husband’s attention. It was a cat, fat and fluffy, alone in a metal cage. Unlike the other cats, he paid little attention to us. He seemed indifferent to humans, as if he’d lost faith in them. On his information sheet attached to the bars of his cage were the words “HEART MURMUR,” in big bold letters.

“He’s old…” The adoption volunteer said wearily. But he was only three.

“He’s slow. He’s mellow.”

She tried to steer us away from him, but we persisted. Finally, she pointed to his sign and said, “He has a grade 6 heart murmur. That means it’s the worst it can get, we’re amazed he made it this long. He’s hard to adopt because, well…he could pass at any time. His heart will just stop. You could spend the money to adopt him only to find him dead the next morning.”

That didn’t deter us. Though the thought of losing something dear to me is always a frightening one, I didn’t feel intimidated by it. Death doesn’t scare me. To me, it is as natural as being born. Perhaps the two aren’t that different. Essentially, when a person is born and when a person dies, they enter another realm of consciousness, another way of being. Doesn’t that make death just a different kind of birth?

Author of On Death and Dying, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, explains how poorly death has become misunderstood:

“The great advances in medicine have convinced people that life should be pain-free. Since death was only associated with pain, people avoided it. Adults rarely mentioned anything about it. Children were sent into other rooms when it was unavoidable. But facts are facts. Death was a part of life, the most important part of life. Physicians who were brilliant as prolonging life did not understand death was a part of it. If you did not have a good life, including the final moments, then you could not have a good death.”

If this is so, then how could this creature, which had been caged for nearly a month, live or die in peace? If he were going to die tomorrow, why couldn’t his last moments be in comfort and love?

We took him home the next day, and he quickly became a valuable member of our little family. We contemplated for days on a better fitting name for him than the one from the shelter, one that captured his courage and how blessed we felt to have him. Eventually, his name found us, not the other way around. Olivander, meaning protector of mankind. Sure enough, in the short time he has been with us, he has shown himself to be our little protector. From the way he growls like a dog when he hears a threatening sound, to the way he snuggles me when I’m feeling tired or sad, Olivander has taken it upon himself to guard and guide us as much as we do the same for him.