If I remember correctly, I’ve been a vegetarian since 1994, though to be honest, it’s been long enough that I may not have the exact year straight in my head. \u00c2\u00a0Suffice it to say that for the better part of two decades I have eschewed the carnivorous lifestyle. \u00c2\u00a0I have done this as a matter of personal choice.<\/p>\n
That’s the part I think almost no one understands. \u00c2\u00a0Everyone wants to know the reason, and if you read enough student essays on vegetarians, you will know that there are always three possibilities for the reason — health concerns, animal welfare activism, and religious beliefs. \u00c2\u00a0I can’t say that I have taken much of a stand for any of the three, nor have I ever really cared that I did. \u00c2\u00a0I am a vegetarian out of personal choice.<\/p>\n
I don’t have an argument to make here. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t eat meat. \u00c2\u00a0I just don’t. \u00c2\u00a0This isn’t about what you eat or what anyone else eats. \u00c2\u00a0I just don’t eat meat.<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong. \u00c2\u00a0I love animals, and I am squeamish about eating them. \u00c2\u00a0I also believe in the health benefits of a plant-based diet. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not opposed to the reasons commonly given for vegetarianism. \u00c2\u00a0I’m just not committed enough to any one of them to claim one as the reason I don’t eat meat. \u00c2\u00a0I have a brother who doesn’t eat spinach, and I don’t eat meat. \u00c2\u00a0These are our personal preferences. \u00c2\u00a0And the one thing you can’t argue someone down on is personal preference. \u00c2\u00a0 If you like blue and I like green, we can argue all day, and you will still like blue, and I will still like green. \u00c2\u00a0Preferences are not positions supported with evidence, and thus they are not convictions people can be persuaded to or away from. \u00c2\u00a0They just are.<\/p>\n
This is why it doesn’t tempt me when you hold a steak up in front of me and say, “Don’t you just want one bite?” \u00c2\u00a0I use this example because something like it happens every day of my life that I am around other people. \u00c2\u00a0I am not tempted because I truly never wanted the steak. \u00c2\u00a0I wasn’t sitting there depriving myself out of some misguided principle that you will be the one person to lure me away from with your clever ploys. \u00c2\u00a0If I wanted to eat the steak I would.<\/p>\n
But I don’t.<\/p>\n
And despite the fact that I haven’t said anything about you eating it and haven’t even thought about what I think of you eating it — because seeing people eat things I don’t eat is no different from seeing people wear shoes I don’t wear — \u00c2\u00a0my not eating it seems to bother you. \u00c2\u00a0That’s why when you can’t tempt me, you take up arguing with me and\/or ridiculing me. \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0And yes, I know this is what you are going to do because it happens at every meal, and has been happening at every meal for nearly twenty years. \u00c2\u00a0My favorite line, by the way, is the one about the bugs in the rice. \u00c2\u00a0You know you can’t really be a vegetarian if you eat plants because plants always have some bugs cooked in with them, and bugs are creatures too. \u00c2\u00a0Yes, yes, I’ve heard that.<\/p>\n
I say all of this to say that despite the fact that I have been a vegetarian all these years, I have never even attempted to become a vegan. \u00c2\u00a0The very thought of social interaction as a vegan exhausts me. \u00c2\u00a0The thought of the number of people who would try to feed me salad with ranch dressing on it, thinking that is what vegans eat, exhausts me. \u00c2\u00a0The thought of trying to explain in restaurants in Mississippi what can and cannot be included on a vegan plate exhausts me.<\/p>\n
I know it can’t be easy. \u00c2\u00a0The social aspects of being a vegetarian have never been easy. \u00c2\u00a0Almost no one can resist harassing the vegetarian. \u00c2\u00a0The vegetarian in the room at any event involving food is always the kid whose mother dresses her funny. \u00c2\u00a0Always.<\/p>\n