Blog

Love and Breakfast

• August 2008
• Vegan

Christian the Lion video (click to watch)
Since over 12 million people have watched this video, the chances are good that you’ve seen it already. But in case you haven’t cried enough today, here it is. You will cry, in a good way 🙂

I had a bizarre conversation with a friend the other day, about the US meat industry. One thing that’s always made me cry (in a bad way) (along with everything else about it), is knowing how sensitive cattle are to smell. Their noses are many many times more sensitive than ours. Have you ever driven by a large cattle operation? The smell is so awful that you can hardly wait to get past it. The cows never get past it. They “live” there 🙁 The thought of them having to stay there, with no way out, smelling that smell magnified hundreds of times beyond what it smells like to me, is truly heartbreaking. I can hardly stand to think about it, and when I do, I always cry. In a bad way. Anyway, I was telling a friend about this the other day and he said, “Well, maybe cows don’t mind bad smells like people do.” Yes, we’re still friends. I’ve been inviting him over a lot for vegan dinners.

I’m not much of a video watcher, but the story of Christian is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Watching that lion race towards his human friends would move anyone’s heart. What touches me the most is the thought of what the two men did to help him. It must have taken an incredible amount of effort and expense for them to raise him in London, and then arrange to transport him to Africa where he could live a natural, wild life. But they did it. It was the right thing to do, and it was a difficult thing to do, and they did it.

Knowing about their actions inspires me to try even harder do the right thing for my fellow creatures, even if it seems hard or inconvenient. We live in a society where animals are dependent on our decisions and our whims. This is an awesome responsibility for us, and one that is kind of daunting, but I think big responsibility often pushes us to live up to it. It is up to us to treat animals with the compassion and respect they deserve.

Factory farming is about as bad as it gets, in the suffering it causes to animals, and, I think, to people too who may become desensitized by the exposure to such a brutal system. We have seen this in other manifestations, historically. Cruel regimes are bad for the victims, and equally bad for the perpetrators. Fortunately for us, being vegan is not only humane and spiritually clean, it is also better for our own health and improves athletic performance. It’s as simple to see as the love between Christian and his human friends 🙂