Food – just a simple thing, right?
“What one eats should be a personal choice.
It is pretty much a private matter.”
Sorry that can’t be!
It is not a personal matter.
In fact, there are no personal choices.
When meat industry is the leading contributor to global warming, and everyone’s life is affected by it, how is it personal anymore?
When meat industry is the reason people are living in close quarters with animals and becoming a carrier to so many diseases that threatens everyone, how is it a personal matter?
When one meat eater, somewhere in the world, caused a Global Pandemic that killed millions of people, how is it a personal matter anymore?
When your “harmless” little-Sunday evening-family get-together-chicken bucket comes from an industry where chickens are given birth just so they can be killed as soon as they grow.
They are injected or fed chemicals so they grow faster and bigger as quickly as possible.
They are kept in small cages with ten other hens/roosters, stuffed one on top of the other like a bag full of potato, where there legs are fractured, bodies are broken and they lie there until they are given deaths.(Though I don’t think they have to wait for a long time – 9 lakh+ hens and roosters get killed in 30 seconds. Let that sink in! By the time you’ll read this 18-20 lakhs of these innocent creatures would have been slaughtered. )
How is it personal anymore?
Don’t give me that, “If we don’t eat them their population…”
No! Please, stop.
Because you eat them, they are harvested.
You stop the demand, supply stops.
If you can heartlessly eat them despite knowing all of this. If you are a slave of your tongue.
Excuse me, I don’t think I can respect you!
Nothing. Absolutely nothing requires you to eat off of someone’s flesh and blood. God made you a human, you have the understanding and wisdom to act different.
“You can’t judge me for just a choice of food.”
Sorry Mam! I can and I will.
Keeping aside all the anger, and out of all the love I can possibly muster, I beg you to understand this – your choice, your luxurious meal, is the reason animals cries echo in a slaughterhouse – day in and day out.
Don’t be “kind” to them.
But be very kind to yourself, at least. The Universe so intricately and flawlessly works on Karma. All these cries and tears and suffering… God forbid, even if a fraction of it was to touch your life, you would be ruined.
Karma is merciless!
Saints have been saying this in so many ways for us to wake up and see what sin we are committing.
कबीर, कहता हूं कहि जात हूं, कहा जो मान हमार।
जाका गला तुम काटि हो, सो फिर काटै तुम्हार।।
कबीर, जोरी करि जबह करै, मुखसों कहै हलाल।
साहब लेखा मांगसी, तब होसी कौन हवाल।
~कबीर साहिब
Wake up!
Be selfish.
Be wise.
Be intelligent.
For one moment, sit quietly, alone and ask yourself, is it worth it?
And when the answer comes.
Accept it.
Just a choiceless surrender.
Stay blessed!
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