“In their capacity to feel pain and fear, a pig is a dog is a bear is a boy” –Phillip Wollen

November 1st is World Vegan Day, so what better than today to speak about veganism, so come along join me and experience the vegan lifestyle filled with compassion, joy, sharing and caring.

In the year 1944 in England, Donald Watson, known as Father of Veganism also co-founder of Vegan society coined the term VEGAN. In a nutshell, this means abstaining from all animal-related products to end animal exploitation. Funny fact Donald Watson was inspired by the word vegetarian so he took the first three letters and the last two letters from the word and coined it as VEGAN.

There are so many amazing ways in which a vegan diet and lifestyle can improve our lives from great health benefits to the use of fewer resources, to decrease the earth’s burden and making the world a much kinder and caring place for the voiceless animals.

I was born into a ‘shuddh desi’ vegetarian family who was thought all about compassion, love towards all forms of being and nature along with the importance of dairy and dairy products in every phase of life. I always lived by the motto “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” which means the world is one family and I knew that it meant that all beings are a part of this world not only us Humans. 

The love for animals made me want to dig deeper and learn more about the animal farming industry and I was shattered. It was crystal clear that animals were abused for our need, greed, and overconsumption. This made me realize that I didn’t want to pay or contribute to this form of exploitation.

We are conditioned to believe that one animal is food, another animal is a pet, and another is a form of god and so on. Most of us would never be okay after seeing an animal being killed or separated from its family because we are all filled with compassion and love. 

But over time we get distracted from reality and made to believe that animals are here for us in various forms like food, entertainment, and experimental specimens. This conditioning has cost us our health, our earth and the heavy price we are paying for this is climate change and climate crisis. The lifestyle that suited our ancestors decades ago doesn’t suit us, or our health, or our earth.

Let’s not forget that animals are here with us and not for us. Go vegan this Vegan month for the animals, for the planet, for the people and mainly for yourself.

(The views expressed in the article are the author’s own. Let Me Breathe neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)