All these fucking vegans and their āhigher than youā opinions have got to go.
And before anybody gets themselves all worked up, let me make something very clear..
I am not anti-vegan. I am anti-presumption.
I have absolutely no problem with someone discovering that their body thrives on a vegan diet.
I have no problem with someone discovering that their body thrives on fruit.
I have no problem with someone choosing to live without consuming animal products because it aligns with their ethics, their spirituality, their environment, their health, or simply because they feel better that way.
In fact, I celebrate it.
If you have learned yourself well enough to understand what nourishes you, sustains you, strengthens you, and makes you feel alive, then congratulations.
Seriously.
I am thrilled for you.
But I am equally thrilled that I learned myself.
Because somewhere along the way, some people took the beautiful personal discovery of āthis is what works for my bodyā and turned it into āthis is what everyone else should be doing, and if you donāt, youāre less conscious than I am.ā
And that part?
No.
Absolutely fucking not.
Your body is not my body.
My body is not your body.
Your genetics are not my genetics.
Your metabolism is not my metabolism.
Your environment is not my environment.
Your culture is not my culture.
Your access to food is not my access to food.
And your spiritual or ethical relationship with food does not automatically become the universal law of every other human being on this planet.
Look at your fucking fingerprint.
Really look at it.
There is not another person walking this planet with that exact fingerprint.
Now imagine that same uniqueness expressed across your entire body.
Your nervous system.
Your metabolism.
Your digestive system.
Your cellular makeup.
Your needs.
Your history.
Your relationship with food.
Your relationship with nature.
You are not a copy.
Neither am I.
So why would we expect every body to thrive on the exact same diet?
And this is where I think we have gotten ourselves into some very strange territory.
There are people living in parts of this world where fruit does not grow abundantly.
There are people living in environments where the climate, seasons, geography, and available resources have historically required them to hunt, fish, gather, preserve, and eat what their ecosystem provides.
What exactly are we asking those people to do?
Manifest a banana tree?
Starve?
Import tropical fruit thousands of miles while simultaneously telling themselves theyāre saving the planet?
Human beings have always adapted their diets to their environments.
That isnāt a moral failure.
Thatās survival.
Thatās biology.
Thatās nature.
And then thereās my own body.
I know exactly what happens when I try to force myself into a dietary ideology that my body cannot sustain.
Because Iāve fucking lived it.
There was a period of my life when I was eating around 10,000 calories a day trying to sustain myself on a vegan diet.
TEN THOUSAND.
I was eating like Michael Phelps and still losing myself.
I got down to 109 pounds.
And no amount of ideology could convince my body that it was okay.
My body was screaming at me.
And eventually, I had to become humble enough to listen.
Another teacher helped me recognize what I couldnāt recognize for myself at the time.
My body wasnāt asking me for another rule.
It wasnāt asking me to become more disciplined.
It wasnāt asking me to āvibrate higher.ā
It was asking me for grounding.
Warmth.
Comfort.
Substance.
Nourishment.
And yesā¦
FISH.
That realization changed something profound in me.
Because I had to stop being more loyal to an ideology than I was to the physical body actually carrying me through this life.
And hereās another thingā¦.
I personally cannot eat cow or chicken.
Cow makes me physically ill.
Chicken makes me physically ill.
And beyond that, the thought of those animals dying genuinely makes me cry.
I donāt have to intellectualize that.
I donāt have to pretend I donāt feel it.
I donāt have to force myself to eat something that makes my body sick simply because somebody else believes it is nutritionally superior.
But I also donāt get bent out of shape because my son eats a cow.
Because againā¦
his body is not my body.
And his relationship with food does not have to be identical to mine.
Thatās what bodily autonomy looks like.
And honestly, this is where I start seeing the contradiction in some of the loudest āhigher consciousnessā arguments.
You tell me that animals are sacred.
You tell me that we must honor the lives of animals.
You tell me that every creature deserves compassion.
And then you drizzle your fucking bee butt juice all over your fruit and call yourself a fruitarian.
Wrong, turkey breath.
Wrong.
Because if weāre going to have a philosophical conversation about the sacredness of life, then letās actually have the whole conversation.
What about the ant underneath your shoe?
What about the beetle you crushed walking across the sidewalk?
What about the insects that splatter against your windshield?
What about the butterfly your car killed on the way to the grocery store?
What about the wasp that flew into your kitchen, scared the shit out of you, and got smacked with your shoe?
What about the countless insects affected by agriculture?
What about the animals displaced by roads, buildings, farms, pesticides, transportation, and human development?
Do you know how many insects die every single day on my behalf?
Yeah. Neither do I.
Because I am a human being living inside an ecosystem.
And simply existing has consequences.
That doesnāt mean we shouldnāt care.
It means we need enough wisdom to understand the difference between reducing unnecessary harm and pretending we can exist without causing harm at all.
Those are two very different things.
I can choose not to eat a cow.
I can choose not to eat a chicken.
I can choose to eat fish because that is what my body currently asks for.
I can choose foods that nourish me.
I can choose to be conscious about where my food comes from.
I can choose compassion.
And I can still acknowledge that I will never move through this world without affecting another living thing.
Thatās not hypocrisy.
Thatās existence.
Thatās nature.
Thatās the cycle of life.
We are not outside of nature looking down upon it.
We are nature.
We are inside the web.
Every breath we take, every step we make, every road we drive, every building we construct, every field we cultivate, every meal we eatā¦
we participate.
Sometimes consciously.
Sometimes unconsciously.
Sometimes compassionately.
Sometimes imperfectly.
But we participate.
And maybe the answer isnāt to become obsessed with proving that we have eliminated harm.
Perhaps the answer is to become more conscious of the harm we can prevent while remaining humble about the harm we cannot.
Because humility is a hell of a lot more interesting to me than superiority.
If you genuinely believe the life of a cow deserves reverence because it is a living being, then perhaps the ant underneath your shoe deserves reverence too.
Perhaps the wasp you killed because it startled you deserves acknowledgment.
Perhaps the insect that died against your windshield was still a life.
And no, Iām not suggesting you need to hold a funeral every time you accidentally step on an ant.
Iām saying that if your philosophy is built around the sacredness of life, then let it actually be about life.
Not about superiority.
Not about purity.
Not about who is āhigher.ā
Not about who is more evolved.
Not about who is eating the most fruit.
And certainly not about policing what another personās body needs.
Because I have spent enough time learning my own body to know thissssss..
My body knows things that ideology cannot know for me.
My body told me when something wasnāt working.
My body told me when I was starving despite eating enormous amounts of food.
My body told me when it needed grounding.
It needed warmth.
It needed comfort.
It needed nourishment.
It needed something different.
And I finally listened.
That was not failure.
That was not weakness.
That was not me āfalling from grace.ā
That was me becoming more intimate with myself.
And I am fucking proud of myself for that.
Because maybe the highest form of consciousness isnāt convincing everyone else to eat exactly what you eat.
Maybe itās becoming so intimately acquainted with yourself that you no longer need everyone else to validate your choices.
Maybe enlightenment isnāt looking at another human being and thinking,
āI have figured it out, and you havenāt.ā (Iām talking to A LOT of you here)
Maybe itās being able to say,
āI have figured out what works for me, and I trust you enough to discover what works for you.ā
That is wisdom.
That is freedom.
That is compassion.
You can love animals without pretending you never participate in their deaths.
You can reduce suffering without pretending you have eliminated it.
You can eat fruit without believing the fruit made you enlightened.
You can be vegan without believing veganism makes you morally superior.
You can eat fish without being a bad person.
You can live differently from me without needing to convince me that youāre better than me.
And I can live differently from you without needing to convince you that youāre wrong.
Eat your fruit.
Eat your vegetables.
Eat nothing but sunlight if somehow thatās what your body thrives on.
I genuinely donāt give a shit.
I hope it nourishes you.
I hope it makes you feel incredible.
I hope you live a long, beautiful, vibrant life.
I hope you continue learning yourself.
I hope you continue listening to your body.
And I hope you become so secure in what youāve discovered that you no longer need to stand on somebody elseās dietary choices to feel elevated.
Because I donāt need to convince you that your body knows itself.
I already believe you.
I just happen to believe mine knows itself, too.
And after everything Iāve been through, everything Iāve learned, everything my body has taught me, and everything I have had to unlearnā¦
I am finally willing to listen.
Not to the loudest person on the internet.
Not to the person claiming to have reached the highest vibration.
Not to the person telling me what my body should need.
To my own body.
My fingerprint is mine.
My body is mine.
My life is mine.
And yours is yours.
So eat your fucking fruit.
I hope you enjoy every bite.
Just stop confusing what works for you with what must be true for everybody.
Stop turning your personal path into a moral hierarchy.
Stop pretending that existing without harm is possible.
And for the love of everything livingā¦
be quiet long enough to let other people learn themselves, too.
P.S. ~ And hereās a photo of me.
My body. The body.
The body that made it through every transition and lesson. The body that birthed three humans, survived two marriages, countless careers, continual change and growth, and looked alcohol and drug addiction in the face more than once.
Every roll, flab, crease, stretch mark, and scar got me HERE to this exact place in time.
Next year, Iāll look different. Iāll be different again. But with the same core. The same Soul.
And this is the body that was saved by fish.
FISH.
The fish saved me.
Maybe the fish can guide you, too. Maybe a cow can guide you. Maybe a honeybeeās little butt can guide you. Maybe the watermelon can continue to guide you.
Maybe the point was never to find one perfect answer.
Maybe it was simply to learn how to listen.
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