Veg or No Veg

My life partner for the past 36 years, Nancy, has been a vegetarian since she was 19.  She decided, at that young age, that meat production required too much land and a non-meat eating style could satisfy her needs and health.  She was influenced by the writing of Frances Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet).  After a time, vegetarianism moved from a choice to something almost spiritual in nature.  She can detect even a scintilla of meat or meat broth in any dish and almost becomes ill from the experience.  She always allowed for fish in her diet, although she avoided “farm raised” varieties for both health and environmental reasons.  Having better information now about the depletion of stock in the world’s oceans, she now avoids particular species.  That list continues to grow over time.  Throughout our relationship and marriage, I have continued in my carnivorous ways and heartily shared the “meat option” with our children during their upbringing.  I flirted with vegetarianism for a couple of years.  I was aesthetically and physically unsatisfied and I put on too much weight from beans and rice.  My meat consumption is probably relatively light by “American carnivore” standards.  I eat it usually with only one meal each day, generally breakfast or lunch when I am out of the home.  Our son, James, who shares my love for barbeque, often provides the “at home” exception/opportunity, living as he does in our over garage apartment.  He and his friends often gather in our backyard throughout the year for food and socializing.  And when I am offered a portion, I cannot be rude.

I never had read Lappe or her progeny and Nancy doesn’t proselytize, so I have been cheerily ignorant and sufficiently satisfied with my reduced meat intake, that is  until the last few months of working on the writing of #Dog Tweet (researching the maintenance of a healthy dog diet), the viewing of Fast Food Nation, being asked to speak to a multi-national corporation, whose principal businesses included rendering of “animal wastes” and finally, my visit to a souk (market) in the medina (ancient walled city) of Fez.

There is a direct relationship between awareness and intention.  If you don’t have sufficient information, choose to ignore what you have, or refuse to seek information when it is otherwise available, you make a choice.  The choice is to limit your options as well as your intentions in life.  A few years ago, a book, The Paradox of Choice, treated the issue of how humans handle choice, generally concluding that too much choice ultimately is detrimental to your well being.

My sense is that processing choices is a matter of adopting an appropriate framework for decision-making, which requires both an awareness of what is at stake and an intention as to outcome.  The greater your awareness, the sharper your intention, the greater likelihood in the outcome being realized.

Nancy considered vegetarianism an environmental choice – not for herself, but for a greater good.  She is moving away from fish consumption, as she learns more about exhausting the world’s fisheries.

In my career as a land use and environmental lawyer, I regularly encounter individuals who claim environmental credentials but lack awareness of how their particular stands on issues are contradicted by their individual behaviors.  My current favorite is advocates for greenhouse gas reduction who drive to hearings in gas guzzling vehicles and insist on free flowing traffic – which, of course, gives enables to more single occupancy gas guzzling vehicles which generate more greenhouse gases.  These folks are not necessarily fools or hypocrites, but their passions are out of alignment with their awareness.  Their diminished awareness undermines their intentions.

The next time you find yourself wanting to “hold forth” on an issue, consider your level of awareness.  Do you know what you need to know to validate your passions, to support your intentions?  I will further discuss my new perspectives on vegetarianism and awareness in my next post.

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Tim Tosta
Life Coach