mid-july

I recently discovered a small Taiwanese restaurant/café called Class 302 close to the university’s campus. I’ve been working late (until the library closes at 8 PM) and visiting the campus gym after this, but usually we’re hungry or too awake after working out to go home and sleep. I introduced one of my friends from the library to another friend from a different circle of my life, and they took me to Class 302 a couple weeks ago. I accidentally ordered dim sum with shredded dried pork as a garnish, and wondered why it tasted so strange to me until Megan pointed out what it was. I’m not sure if it was this small amount of animal protein after years of abstinence or all the sugar in the shaved ice we ordered that gave me a stomach ache later. But it probably wasn’t the pound of sugar.

            Last night we went again and, when considering what to order, my friend turned to me and said “why don’t you get pig like you did last time?” I turned to her and said “are you happy that I ate pig? Does that make you happy?” We were joking; and I don’t even remember what the stuff tasted like, but there’s been a weird concatenation of events in my life recently that have been asking me to consider the choices that I’ve made and the things that are important to me. Sometimes, looking over a menu, I’ll whine, I’ll say something like “I wish I could eat fish!” and then someone with me will say, “why don’t you? We could go to a lot more places,” or, “you should, then we can go get sushi.” Someone at work the other day was really surprised to learn that I don’t even eat/drink animal broth, not even with the “bouillon cubes, you know, for flavor?” I said something to the effect of “if I couldn’t live without that flavor in my life I’d have a different set priorities.” And it’s true. It’s sort of a tautological statement, so it doesn’t even matter that I said it, but at the time it seemed appropriate. I’m wondering now how much of what I say is white noise.

            I wonder—I suppose if you don’t know, if you haven’t made this kind of sacrifice—you couldn’t know what it’s like. My body still wants animal products. I smell meat and it is food to my nose and I want to eat it, I feel drawn to it, I know it would be good to me, for me. I know that it’d be a lot easier for friends to take me out or take care of me, it’d be easier for my family, it’d be easier for me, too, to shop, not to have to read the ingredients on every single pre-packaged thing I buy to make sure I know what I’m putting into my body, that it doesn’t violate what I hold to be right for my life. Sometimes I want to ask, when people say things like “we could go more places”—I want to say—do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know what I’m giving up? Do you think that every day, I’m unaware of the sacrifices I’m making and asking you to make if you want to go somewhere with me? I resist the impulse to withdraw; I’m loathe to be a burden. But I also feel, I don’t have a choice in this matter. I fully believe that the right thing for me to do is to abstain from eating animal products. And, believing this to be the right thing to do, do I have the option not to do it? To live the way I feel is right, this is what I have to do. And I am used to explaining this to people, but I’m sure it’s one of those things that you don’t understand until you give up something like it; until you are, multiple times each day, fighting against your natural impulses to do what you think is right.

            I used to sort of think that people were born innocent and good and this dissipated as they grew older and violated their own purity, or goodness. But what I’m learning more and more is that you have to earn goodness. I’m not talking about spiritual righteousness or goodness—that’s a whole other discussion. I mean, you have to earn the type of self that puts good into the world. You don’t have that from birth and then lose it. When I got home from England I realized the simple validation, person-to-person, of receiving a smile from someone on the street or in passing. You don’t find a lot of that in the UK—they’re famously reserved—so when I returned to California after three months of solitude, after three months of fighting to preserve my sense of self and worth amidst a world that did not know or care I was walking its streets, and I found that people, strangers, smiled at me in passing, I felt incredibly…human. I felt acknowledged as a person, as a human being with a heart and a brain and something beyond the body. And that doesn’t just happen—people aren’t born smiling! I was touched, I think, by the fact that someone would take time out of their own minds or own concerns to reach out to me, even if it was in a small way. And I began to understand that my reservations are not protecting me from a world that doesn’t understand me and does not wish me well, but are stifling these opportunities in my life and other people’s lives. I think now about all the people who have changed my life, who have made an impact on the way I look at God or the world and everything is illuminated in a certain fatedness, and I realize that every small thing they did for me has gotten me to where I am, has gotten me through some intense difficulties, has, at times, saved me from myself….This is a small example. But I believe that doing what you feel to be right, even if it’s hard, is something you must preserve. Despite what is easy, or what appears to you, or what would please the people around you most. People often wish to be better. I think there are endless opportunities to be better. People sometimes say that you get back what you put into the world, but I think that’s missing the point—your job is to put goodness into the world. What you get out of it is that you’re better able to put good into the world.

I look up to people in a magnetic sort of way who are natural lights, who can make anyone feel better, who can brighten anyone’s day without trying, with ease and grace and something akin to beauty, a tangible spirituality and peace. I am not that person. But there are still things I can do.