vegans – thy name is compassion

Compassion is a wonderful thing and something lacking in too many people’s lives. We are all so hell bent on getting ahead that the people who actually give a shit about anything other than themselves are few and far between.

 

However, where you will find an abundance of them in the vegan community.

For some that compassion seems, very oddly, to extend to animals only with no real care for other people or the environment.

 

But for many the compassion is all enveloping.

These are the kind souls who buffer the new vegans from the scorn of the older (and therefore much better and more evolved) vegans, who offer kind advice and gentle correction, who share ideas and recipes and tricks that make it easier; thing they have learnt that they don’t think other people should have to struggle to know.

 

For all the self-righteous sanctimonious vegans of yesterday’s post there are a slew of truly compassionate people for whom veganism is a lifestyle choice rather than a food choice.

 

They care – about themselves, about others, about generosity and compassion, about building people up and empowering them, about sharing their skills and knowledge – and they happen to manifest this in ways that include not wanting to kill animals for food.

 

Now that’s true veganism in my book

Lockerbie

The freeing of the Lockerbie bomber so he can go home to die has caused consternation across the nations. People are discussing it and arguing about it on all the continents and at dinner tables everywhere.

 And i have my opinion too.

 I believe we live beneath and within an atmosphere of emotions. Just like the pollution and the oxygen produced on earth float around in the atmosphere above and around us, so too do the emotions we create and experience.

 The emotional atmosphere of earth is angry, sad and murderous. We all live beneath a cloud of toxic, heavy emotions, pressing down on us and filling us with fear.

 I believe we are all responsible for the emotions we send out into this atmosphere. And we have to try to reduce the negative emotions we both feel and cause others to feel.

 The Lockerbie bombing was a terrible thing to have happen.

 Close to 300 people died, and their families and loved ones will hurt forever. The tragedy resulted in so much sad and angry energy being added to the burden of the emotional atmosphere because of the actions of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi  and whoever else was involved.

 Not for one second do i think that he did not deserve to be punished, that the families of the dead did not have the right to see him behind bars, denied his liberty.

 But the man is dying. To what end should he be kept in jail for the last 3 months of his life? The justice system is not supposed to be about revenge; allowing him to die a sad, lonely and horrible death far from everyone who loves him is what the people he hurt might want. But that’s because they want revenge; they want to hurt as they were hurt.

 All that would do is create more pain. His family didn’t do anything except love him.  Does making them hurt too reduce the pain the families of the dead feel? Does insisting he have a horrible death make their deaths less horrible? Does being cruel now, when the man is broken and so close to death not reduce us to, in some ways, worse than him? At least he believed he was committing this atrocity for some idealistic reason; the greater good. However misguided we may all think that is, surely it is not as bad as seeking vicious revenge in the cold, hard light of reason.

 This man has already been responsible for so much anger, pain and tears. He has tainted the emotional atmosphere underneath which we all have to live. Let us not insist on allowing him to taint it more. Let us not chose to feel anger at him and the justice system for letting him go home and die.  Let us not allow this release to be a bad thing which hurts more of the innocent. Let him go and let his family love him as he dies. They did nothing; why should they too be caused additional pain?

 He will answer to for all he has done; let us not make it more. If we do, the burden of pain under which we all live simply increases.