One of the great perks of working for a newspaper is the freebies. Sure, we're paid a pittance, but I like to think that all the money I've saved by having a press pass for hockey games, free tickets for concerts or "luncheon" invitations (prior to having this job, I don't think I'd ever experienced a "luncheon") makes up for it in some small way.
When I was at university, the promise of free food was a constant guiding force in decision-making. Students rarely admitted it, and probably hardly realized it, but the route you took from one class to another and the events you chose to attend were influenced in some small part by the availability of free food. It's amazing how many people will pretend to be interested in a teaching degree from an Australian university when there's pizza involved.
So the promise of free food with the job has been something I've been particularly attracted to. Especially when it's in the hoity-toity context of a "luncheon." But for me there's always been a small catch - I'm a vegetarian.
So after sending the umpteenth email asking if I should be prepared to eat dinner before a free dinner, I thought I should write about my vegetarianism.
Growing up in Alberta, I never really had strong feelings either way about vegetarianism. I happily ate whatever was put in front of me without thinking too much about it. The same went for my first year of university.
But after that first year, I had an incredible opportunity to visit India with an Indian-run NGO. We were taken through northeast India for five weeks, visiting village after village, spending hours in a car, or hiking, or simply waiting. The NGO whose work we witnessed was active in only a tiny section of India, but was likely responsible for hundreds of villages.
The trip showed me a side of the world I had never seen before. I didn't just see poverty. We have poverty in Canada. What I saw was extreme, impossible-to-contemplate poverty. Families living in what amounted to ditches, in houses made of salvaged materials. Lepers. Amputees who begged from tiny wheeled carts. The poverty existed rurally, too.
At one point, we visited the village that had the lowest immunization rate of the entire region. As the town was located away from the roads, we first trekked through a nearby village, where we spoke (through a translator) to the residents. They seemed fairly happy, and lived what I imagined was an idyllic life in the country. Difficult it may have been, but the people there were hospitable, helpful and generous, serving us tall, narrow cups of steaming chai.
The next village, though, was a sea change. We had assumed it would be, but were unprepared for the difference. Clouds of flies followed us and everyone else constantly. After a few futile attempts to remove them from our clothes, we, like the locals, simply gave up. We sat with a large group of children and adults and talked, but there was a strange sort of listlessness in their eyes and a deep distrust. In our time in India, we had all become completely accustomed to the filth. But here, there was a different sort of dirtiness. The air felt sick. Their eyeballs were the wrong colour.
We weren't there to "help," only to listen. And it was by no means the worst place we saw. But it definitely left an impression.
The time difference between India and Edmonton is about 12 hours, so when I arrived home I had the most severe jet lag of my life. Because of this, I spent a great deal of time alone in the mornings, collecting my thoughts. My overwhelming feeling was of disgust for the wealth I had been born into. The feelings came to a head one morning when I waited in bed for the rest of my family to wake up. In the pale, cold dawn light, a radio ad for a car dealership brought on a sudden epiphany. The ad, like so many others, argued that people should buy a new car. I felt, profoundly and fearfully, just how spiritually empty this ad was.
We have enough cars in North America. Those who need cars and don't have one will get one whether there are advertisements or not. The ad illuminated just how much disposable income we have as Canadians, and how utterly asinine we are with it. We have an entire industry devoted to convincing people that they need something they don't.
I became a vegetarian, in part, to deny myself something that I really loved, to fight against the spiritually dead message in advertising that everyone should get what they want.
As time went on though, I realized that there were a myriad of reasons to be a vegetarian. Red meat is unhealthy. The "typical Canadian" diet (or at least the one I was raised on) has far more protein than anyone needs. The conditions of factory farms (where much of our meat comes from) are atrocious from both a moral and a health standpoint.
I also realized that by keeping myself from eating meat, I would avoid fast food, something I mean to do anyway. More generally, I found I could not shake the niggling feeling that there was something inherently cruel about eating another sentient creature. If I couldn't eat a dog (after much debate I remain completely convinced that I could never eat a dog regardless of cultural sensitivity), how could I eat a pig, which is more intelligent?
At this point in my life, I wouldn't say I have a single reason for being a vegetarian. And I never proselytize - I think there are plenty of reasons for eating meat, and plenty of ways of eating meat that are healthy and ethical. Just as importantly, I think I understand there are plenty of completely unhealthy, unethical vegetarians in the world.
But, even if it keeps me from enjoying the many free meals I'm invited to, I'm sticking with my vegetarianism.
