The only criteria required of a vegan is empathy for living things. If another’s pain ever broke your heart, if modern animal industries make you even a little uncomfortable, you are capable of empathy. That ability alone makes you vegan. Some believe and live their lives based on the idea that the moral and beneficial for all, miraculously, is the same thing. Some believe it more than others. Some live it more than others. But the only perfect vegan is starving, naked, and alone in the deep forest.

We’re all mercy and compassion at heart because why choose and justify death and destruction when you can choose light and love without justification?

We’re all vegan at heart. We’re all hypocrites too, imperfect human beings doing our best to figure out how to love the world and how to love ourselves. Compared to our ancient foremothers, modern vegans are woken in the midst of slaughter with blade in hand, towering atop the corpses of our dominion. We boldly shoulder our wrongs in an imperfect manifestation and take each momentous stride toward a better tomorrow.

We own the past and the long road ahead.

We forge on in rusted steel under fire.

When I was younger I spent a lot of my time in the world of children’s shows and cartoons. My favorite was TMNT. I loved them because they were crime fighting turtles who loved pizza, traveled by skateboard and battle-ready hippie van with a kungfu rat master who meditated and spoke gloriously in aphorisms. The name pretty much says it all: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were a team, a family, outsiders, each with a unique personality, each named after renaissance artists, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. They have their tempers and inner turmoil and everything that comes with being a growing boy learning the New York City streets. It wasn’t until much later in my life, looking back at shows like TMNT that I started to notice the hidden messages.

First of all, they’re mutants developed by accident in some horrific lab experiment. And even though they have ample reason to be opponents of the human race for the crimes committed, they stand for the good and protect the weak. Then there’s bebop and rocksteady, human thugs mutated into warthog and rhino by similar feats of science to fight for world domination under a master, Shredder, who has an even higher master, Krang, the demented brain, literally a brain. A brilliant metaphor for our relationship with the natural world.

But the thing that strikes me most is that I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of making the connection that my heroes on TV were the same animals in real life and often, too often on the dinner table. Maybe I blocked it out of my mind completely, but I don’t remember having any turtle soup. I do remember walking into the grocery store and seeing turtles in a tank, soft shell, and never once making the connection that the TMNT are in fact, those very same turtles. It seems like such an obvious connection, especially for a child who was learning about animals. Wouldn’t that boy simply ask, “Hey, aren’t those “turtles” in the tank? Boy, they do look a lot like the ninja turtles.” Did something happen to sever that connection that should have been so obvious, if not turtles, any other animal?

Distance.

By the time I see the waiter place a plate of sliced duck meat on the table, that duck had already traveled far and wide, across dimensions of perspective from the moment my young malleable mind had registered Daffy or DarkWing Duck as “ducks”, the living, breathing, feeling, frolicking animal. First, remove cartoonization, then stuff in cage. I mean really get them in there, throw, shove, squeeze, boot them in there with the others. Pump full of chemicals until holiday size. A good indicator is when their bones break or they are just immobilized from obesity. Gut early, gut good. Down they go in the pool. If they survive the knife, the scolding water will get them. Pluck goes the feathers. Chop em, slice em, wrap em, pack em, rack em, then snatch em, and roast em. Voila, from the TV screen to the table, your childhood hero, somewhere beneath the guise of all that excitement and merriment. Distracted by all the confusing new sensations of growing up, and like our caretakers too, longing to be a part of something, anything, I facilitate my conditioning to see the glossy chunks on the table as completely unrelated to those animal heroes of mine.

If more people made shows with cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, fish, would our children see the obvious sooner than I did? Would they cry?

Good day people of earth. I want to begin our journey together by addressing a simple and vital question. Why do I choose to abstain from participating in the exploitation of animals? I’m picky. When someone says, “I’m picky”, it usually means a mean chef about to storm out the swinging doors of the kitchen because his mastered craft somehow elicited an insinuated suggestion on the lines of, “You got any Sriracha”, or “I don’t do new-stuff.” I’ve had my go at balut and resisted hot sauce-everything temptations swiftly. This isn’t about the narrow mindset that is taste-is-king. In an attempt to strengthen my credence I will add that I live by the profound principle that style-is-everything.

I’m picky. I refuse to knowingly bring suffering to other sentient beings when the good life thrives on making decisions rooted in the wisdom of compassion. We can have our vegan cake and eat it too. Heaven is on earth.

I’m choosy, you could say. I choose to throw myself into the raging rapids of a movement born of that compassion, set off to heal the planet, our one home for our many homes, and us, living in these sanctuaries. And the reasons behind this bold enterprise to embrace humanity’s love are many.

I’m picky. So much so that among the volumes of reasons to be vegan, I can’t seem to just pick one. But I know that like you, I am blessed, blessed with the courage to be a voice for the voiceless, a light for the hopeless, and wise for the younger. I am blessed with the power to choose the world I want our children to live in. Onward, vegan family! I’m Zulu. Until next time, more power to you. Peace!