Ahimsa and connection to living beings.

Why is it that someone can go years and even a lifetime without really considering what they're eating? I am guilty of it myself. It seems as though I was somehow numbed to the connections that exist in this world; that I purposely dissected everything and left them separate.

Sure, disconnection is a survival technique of sorts, but to take so long to see the connectivity of life is a wonderment to me. I know it has a good deal to do with the culture and environment I grew up in, but still, with the speed of thought, it amazes me how it could have taken me so long. I would watch the movie "Babe" with its portrayal of animals speaking English as if they were human, and cry continually during the scene when Babe loses its mother - and yet still not truly connect that pigs=bacon.

It wasn't long ago that I finally realized that the thoughts I would have of, 'what am I eating?' would surface; but at the time, something inside me would choose to push the thoughts away. The truth was not something I was ready for.

In the mainstream culture of the United States, we are inundated with how meat is 'good' for you and you 'need' it to survive. The answer to 'what am I eating?', as it turns out, would be a prior living sentient creature who had no say in how it lived its life - how it would spend its time on earth - and how it would die. After deciding to face the truth and being determined to watch videos on the realities of how animals are treated and slaughtered for human consumption [which were emotionally severely painful to watch and some of the most emotional pain I have ever felt], my eyes were opened - and opened WIDE.

How the focus of 'what am I eating?' was most likely still alive while watching those whom he/she spent its entire life with are slaughtered brings to mind the horrifying occurrences told in some of the cringing headlines that people seem horrified over; yet they easily will pay for and eat something that died the exact same way - in fear - suffering a horrible death.

Yet people can get all up in arms about a polygamist camp...