Origins

One of the huge shifts the past couple of months isn't just around opening my eyes to see what is happening with animals in the food supply, but in seeing beyond what is in front of me, to what stands behind it, everything that dominoed for it to be in my living.

I get a massage, and as I take in the delicious scent of the aromatherapy blend she's using, an outrageously luscious mix of spruce, pine, and cedar I realize: this is the essence of trees, these oils come from trees, trees died so that I could have their tree-ness massaged into my back, be absorbed into my body, become a part of me.

I give The Hoon his insulin shot and realize: to get this insulin into this syringe, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of animals - mice, rabbits, cats, dogs, monkeys, chimps, guinea pigs - died from tests and experiments and trial runs way too freakin horrendous to mention, though we all have heard the stories, seen the pictures. I ask myself: is it worth it? Is it worth it to stab The Hoon twice a day in his neck and inject this liquid that is the product of so many creatures' torture and misery?

I put small spoonfuls of goat cheese on a scrambled egg and realize: this egg was under a chicken just a few days ago, this goat cheese came from milk created inside a mother goat's body as nourishment for her kid. Do I honor this sacrifice enough? Do I appreciate their labors? Is it worth it to take the fruits of labors that weren't intended for me? Did I give enough back with the 50 cents I paid for the egg, the $1 or so for the portion of goat cheese?

I hold my cell phone in my hand and realize: someone put this together with their hands, probably made 50 cents for a 15-hour day of putting these together, in a factory with poor ventilation, probably a child or teen with nimble hands, eyesight still keen, though not for long. I wonder: did they get enough to eat that day? Was it something they found delicious? Did they long for something else, something more substantial, something that tasted better? Did they make this cell phone and think about the American, the European in whose hands it would end up in? Did they think about our selfishness, our obliviousness? Did they wish they were me?

Death is still on my mind, as it has been for the past year and two months, since Grandma B died. I still see her furry little face, the one she wore when she purred in my arms, the one she wore the moment she died in our car on the side of the road.

The death of animals that I eat. The death of plants that I eat. The death of people who labor in dangerous jobs, jobs that make them sick, that rob them of joy, so that I can have a tv and a computer and a twinkle lights in my office and bananas from Chile in February. The death of bacteria and viruses and fungus every time I take a breath, death by immune system, death via the heat of my body.

Why are we all so afraid of death? Is it because we cause the deaths of so many in order for us to survive? Is it because we need so many deaths to live in the manner we've grown accustomed to, to have the lifestyle we do? Is it because we dishonor death with our ignorance, our obliviousness, the greed that lives just beneath the surface of our arrogant sense of entitlement?

As I look around my office I realize that every single thing here comes with a death toll. And it isn't the honorable death of shooting a deer in the woods for meat, for the tools and clothing and body adornment that every single bit of him will be used for. It is more akin to the deaths demanded by a pharaoh, hundreds of thousands of humans and animals put into hard labor so that a monument can be built to serve his belief system about his role in Life.

I can hear one of those super confident, hip, together guys say: woman, you don't have to apologize for your place on the food chain.

But I do. It isn't right. But I've no clue what to do other than to keep scaling back, keep finding simpler ways to live, keep finding ways to generate the courage to keep my eyes open, to face the truth of the facts of the world.

This isn't nihilism. It isn't depression. I know this is part of waking up. And that it's probably going to continue to suck for a while as I refuse to look away, no matter how horrendous the view.

Yeah, it's all a dream. Yeah, it's all a movie. But I am just so blown away that it's a horror film. I just didn't know. But now I do. And I can't help but wonder, why? That ago old question.

And I pray for the next gate to be revealed, for the key to it's unlocking to make itself known.

But in the meantime, I watch, look, learn, wait for the next actions to take to make themselves known.

What else can we do?