Why I have become a vegetarian

I have not been eating meat for four years now.

During all this time people around always asked me why and it became a really challenge for my family and friend to cook for me in occasionally meetings. I’ve never asked for vegetarian food. I can face any meeting without discussing my culinary preferences. I am not embarrassed, nor proud. It’s just a fact of my life and I do not need to make a conversation about it.

Still, there were many persons that asked me why. Every time I answered “just like that, I do not eat meat” in that way that does not let room for more questions.

In fact, I did not know how to define my vegetarianism. I feel like not eating meat. It’s not something rational, it’s a feeling, that need that comes from the heart with no other question. I need to be vegetarian. My soul needs it.

But I started asking myself why, as I use to ask myself about many of my decisions, my feeling, my rational mind, my life and my soul.

Asking this, I have discovered that everything has started long ago. I was a teenager when there was a big flood in the small town where I grew up. With the flood there came the rats but, most of all, bugs of all sizes. They were everywhere on the street, day and night and they were hitting you in your head, on your body, even trying to enter your mouth. Quite disgusting. I hated bugs.

I still don’t really like them if I have to cross words with them. When I see them with all their legs and the dark colours, I feel a sort of fear.

In that period after the flood I remember walking on the street and stepping over the bugs without wanting. I remember the sound of their bones broken under my shoes and my body still vibrates. That sound was terrible for me. I hated bugs, but I also hated killing them.

The years passed and I forgot in a certain way about that episode. I have met a few vegetarian people in my life; some were very proud of this fact, but some were humble, the ones that made it because they felt like that. Being a vegetarian was part of their life, it wasn’t something extraordinary. It was like they were saying they liked cranberries and disliked mint ice-cream. Simple and natural.

The idea of becoming a vegetarian started to come into my mind, but it was not solid as I had no motivation. After some more years, there came the moment I understood I did not want to eat meat anymore.

I was spending time with a very young baby from our neighbourhood. She was wonderful and made me be surprised about the miracle of life. Then, one day, I was cooking a chicken. It will sound hilarious and maybe completely insane, but when I saw the dead chicken body that I was about to slice and cook, I was thinking about that little girl’s body, they were so similar - small legs and hands, a big body as only young human beings have. That moment I saw the similarities of life from more angles: nature replicates patterns over and over. And that is absolutely gorgeous!

I stopped eating meat as I felt so. And I do no think this a a recipe for life and I have never tried to convince anyone to eat like me. This is my way of celebrating life, of contemplating the universe, of being grateful for everything that is created around me and makes up my world.

And I have to say, this is my way, not a way that someone else should follow. This is a personal choice and it has nothing grandiose in it. I am sure there are many people out there that eat meat and celebrate life every day much better than I do, as I am sure there are vegetarians that do negative things to the environment and themselves.

image source: pixabay.com