Resolution and Reason

Amy Goodrich

There's something peaceful about snow.

Looking out my window, I can tell by all that white that it's that time of year again - time for cold, time for treacherous sidewalks and streets, time for wet dog-prints all over the house.  But something about snow is fundamentally bigger than all its accompanying annoyances.  While it puts life on hold, slows it to a crawl and buries it beneath layers, I know the snow is doing its part to ensure that the world will again be a wonderful place to be in the year to come.

Since it arrives at the same time of year as the holiday season, a time of giving, loving, and yes - one last kicker as all the Christmas music finally dies down: resolutions - I can forgive snow its inconveniences and use it as a reminder to examine how my own life can positively impact the world around me. 

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Being a vegetarian is not always the easy thing to do.  Sometimes there are temptations, sometimes there is frustration with prying apart a recipe for undisclosed ingredients, and sometimes there are tiresome questions, comments, and attacks to face.  But now, as resolution-time rolls around again, individually stopping to question what's personally important in the world - and why - helps to renew convictions for the New Year. 

If, like most people, your resolutions involve internal promises of bettering yourself, then remember what a meatless diet does for your own well being.  Your body is spared the unnatural influences of the hormones and antibiotics so rampantly found in commercial meat these days.  You won't be exposing yourself to the risk of slaughterhouse contaminants like e-coli, which have sickened and even killed unaware meat-eaters in recent times.  By steering clear of Atkins-spawned fads, you will have avoided the raised risk of cancer and high-cholesterol such "diets" leave there adherents with, and - ironically enough - you will probably have more success at lowering your body-fat in the long run. And if you have your own ethical scruples about choosing a carnivorous lifestyle, you'll have freed yourself of the cognitive dissonance that comes from talking ethics out one side of your mouth while eating a burger with the other.  If it's about improving your own well-being, vegetarianism can be a piece of the peace-of-mind puzzle. 

But most peoples' resolutions don't revolve solely around themselves.  Our effects on other people - and how to give back to society - are a driving force in the lives of many of us. Consider how vegetarianism contributes to those around you, as well.

By eating low on the food chain, you're actually consuming less.  We've all heard the numbers about the energy, land, and water usage required for a pound of animal protein versus protein from a vegetable source - if being a responsible citizen includes reducing your own environmental impact, there's literally no better way to do this than excluding meat from your meals.  By avoiding meat, you're opting against supporting an industry with a track-record of damaging public lands (through overgrazing and riparian destruction by improperly managed animals), polluting public water systems (through animal "waste-lagoons" at factory-farms and from pesticide leaching from crops grown to feed livestock), and exploiting disadvantaged workers (slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant employees, at the lowest level of income in America, have one of the highest illness and injury-rates of any industry, according to the USDA).  For the benefit of others, vegetarianism is a responsible way to practice advocacy daily. 

Beyond serving your own desire for betterment, and beyond the desire to better conditions for the other human beings, both close and distant, with whom you share the planet, one of the most fundamental reasons many of us choose not to consume other creatures is for the sake of those creatures themselves.

To the animals of the world - including those raised commercially and those wild animals affected (either directly: think predator-eradication, or indirectly: think habitat destruction) by commercial farming practices, your choice to be a vegetarian is the ultimate gift.  The obvious act of simply refusing to participate in the cycle of cruelty and commodification that meat represents to many vegetarians is a statement that each one of us can make, personally and publicly, on behalf of those who have no voice in our society.  By not taking part in their exploitation, you do your part to reduce demand; by taking the time to answer questions about your choices thoughtfully, honestly, and engagingly, you are helping others to understand the role they may not even be aware of  playing in this system.

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When the snow reminds me that the New Year is here, I step back from my lifestyle and reexamine the reasons behind my choices.  I am a vegetarian because I choose to be - but that commitment is not just about me, or animal ethics, or environmental politics, or even human rights.  In the end, it's about doing the right thing.

There's no money in it.  There are no awards or recognition and few external gratifications for continuing the commitment to a vegetarian lifestyle.  There is just the peace of looking back, as the snow starts falling at the beginning of another year, and knowing that I have continued to live my life the way I feel is best. 

Ultimately, this is the only way any one person can make the world a better place.

There can be no better resolution than that.