Survival by Embracing the Change

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The very first learning that I got in my career is that I need to learn to embrace change and adapt to the changes if I want to survive and grow in my career. The only thing that is constant is change, and we have seen enough examples of software giants disappearing overnight simply because they could not keep up with pace of the emerging markets. Because they could not adapt to the change. But this is not just true in terms of career. It is also true in every sphere or life. Humans have evolved and survived by embracing the changes around us for millions of years. But right now we are facing the biggest existential crisis of all times in the history of the mankind and if we want to survive this threat we need to adapt and change our old ways of doing things and get over the habit of giving the same excuse “I have always done it this way”.

The crisis I am talking about is the culture of carnism, eating flesh for no reason at all against all odds and against our natural disposition and all we need to do in order to stop this is to go back to being normal. Whether we deny it or accept it, the truth is that our old eating habit is not the best thing and we know for sure it is not only destroying the planet, it is unhealthy and it is extremely cruel to the living sentient beings we share our planet with. And when I try to think what could possible reasons that motivate people to continue this behavior. I realized that the major culprit was the lack of awareness among the masses, but a very close second reason was our rigidity to examine our own destructive actions and their potentially harmful consequences. We try to easily defend our actions in the name of culture, tradition etc. But what is it doing to us as a society. We have strong defense mechanism if we find something conflicts with our belief system. For instance, if you confront somebody who does not refrain from eating animal products despite knowing how cruel it really is, they can give some pretty unreasonable arguments to prove their point. One such absurd excuse I came across was “Why do you care so much for animals; Plants have feelings too. Will you stop eating the plants now?” or “It’s our culture to celebrate occasions with eating non vegetarian food”.  How can this meaningless killing be condoned and above all celebrated as culture in our societies? If we have been doing something in a certain way it does not necessarily mean that it is the best thing. We need to be open to new ideas and possibilities that might be hiding under the name of tradition or culture.

We need to understand the consequences of the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves. The change in the perspective is extremely important and it does not stop at what you eat. What cosmetics you use and what you wear might also we equally cruel. Several prestigious cosmetic brands practice extremely torturous animal experimentation and mutilate these innocent creatures. Toothpaste has bones, the shampoo is marked safe after it is tested on the eyes of rabbit.  Besides we steal their skin, furs and feather, cocoon or tusk to make products like leather, ivory jewelry, fur coats, silk or belts etc. and still choose to stay blissfully apathetic and oblivious to these choices are wrecking unimaginable havoc on the lives of these animals.

However, we can change this and stop this madness at an individual level. The first step to embrace this change in lifestyle is to acknowledge that we are not perfect, that some of the things that we do are not necessarily the right things. Instead of resisting the change by coming up with illogical arguments we need to open our minds to new possibilities and entertain the idea that there can be a better way. We have to  wake up from our deep slumber of living an ignorant lifestyle to being mindful and making informed decision. Our reason to make the change in our current lifestyle might be varied from ethics, compassion, health, environment but the benefits are immense and far reaching and it is a win-win situation for all. And there is no reason to underestimate the contribution of an individual. The award winning documentary “Cowspiracy: The sustainability secret” states that by being a vegan or vegetarian a single person can save 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grains, 30sq ft of rainforest, 20lbs of CO2 and 1 animal’s life every single day. The statistics are mind boggling and so the contributions of every single one of us. I feel so empowered if I think I alone have saved the lives of 60 animals in last 2 months by going vegan. We can also stop causing unnecessary pain to these voiceless beings by changing our shopping patterns  and rather than covering ourselves with animal skin etc, we can start  opting for some cruelty free products https://www.beautywithoutcruelty.com/  and moving away from products like http://www.peta.org/living/beauty/companies-that-still-test-on-animals/ .

Gradually a lot of people are waking up to this fact and taking action. The most amazing example is China, which has decided to take an initiative and pledged to cut its consumption of meat by 50%. We are seeing famous celebrities like Arnold Schwarzeneggar and James Cameron urging people to eat less meat. According to another organization “Mercy For Animals”, we are murdering 400 million less animals annually. That is because people are gradually waking up to the change is so imminent.  We have seen famous celebrity Leonardo D’Caprio making several award winning documentaries to raise the awareness of the people so that people like us can come to know, how harmful our current habits are and how we can make a transition to a better way of life. The one in which we can all grow together and live in the state of harmony. Be sure to check out the amazing documentary like “Forks over knives”, “Cowspiracy” , “Vegucated” and “The earthlings” to understand why the change is not only necessary it is imminent. All I am asking you to do is to catch up with pace or you will find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Awareness is Bliss

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I am sure many of us have heard the saying "ignorance is bliss", today I want to discuss exactly why the opposite is true. Most of us, myself included, are aware of very few selective topics or things in our life. Things that matter to us, impacts us, interests us or may ignite the innate curiosity in us. What about the rest of the things? Well turns out we don't care much. We just know enough to get by. While I do understand that it is important to choose a few things to focus our energy on for obvious reasons. How do we decide if something is really worth our attention? In the age that we live in there is no dearth of information or knowledge. In fact there is information overload. What is lacking though is the wisdom to choose what is worthy of our attention.

We will all agree that there is a set of few absolutely basic essential skillset or knowledge that each one of us must be aware of and acquainted with, such as knowing at least one language to communicate with other human beings in order to get by in our day to day life. This is amongst the bare essentials. One such essential yet completely ignored knowledge is the importance of what we feed ourselves. This is not a skill or knowledge we need to learn about explicitly. It is something each one of us knows intuitively like every other species on this planet does. However, over a period of time as we grow up we learn and imbibe from our society at a very young age, it becomes a second nature and most us never give a second thought about what we eat every day over and over again and how it impacts our health and well-being. Basically we are not aware. Sometimes not until we are forced to be aware or pay attention or sometimes may be not even then.

Similar was the case with me, until I was forced to know more about this topic. I had heard over and over again, “you are what you eat", but I never really gave much thought to it, never bothered to understand the importance of what this summary really means. A few years back I had a health issue and it was a chronic health issue. I went to a lot of doctors but didn't get much help except for a couple of different pills because no one really had the cure. No one knew how to fix the issue. Most of the doctors told me that I had to live with it but I was tired of popping pills. I wanted to be healthy and that too on my own. So I decided to ditch the pills and put my faith in the god and myself that I will be able to heal myself. I completely stopped taking all kinds of medication and without any plans I just started being more physically active each day. Hoping that this lifestyle would cure me based on whatever limited knowledge I had. Along with that I started to do some research on natural cures. I did not get success right away and often times I would keep chasing a wrong goal or may be just going in the wrong direction. I gradually stumbled upon the tons of literature related to the role food plays in our body. I gradually started to build a relationship with my food and started to give much more thought to what I am putting in my body. I finally started to know what they meant when they said you are what you eat. I was not aware earlier but maybe I would never have realized if it wasn't for this situation in my life.

So what did I learn? Well, I had been predominantly vegetarian all my life. I used to love eating eggs but I never liked milk. Few of my family members were non-vegetarian and tried to force me into eating the same. However, I could never eat non-vegetarian food because I never liked the taste of flesh. Eventually, they stopped forcing me. But little did I knew back then that what I was choosing is having a great impact on my health. Of course, I was not making all the right choices because I didn't know then. I always knew cutting out junk and sugar is essential but just doing that didn't have much impact on my health. I still had a long way to go and find what I was not doing right.

One of my very dear friend was kind enough to be my mentor. She made me realize how I never gave much thought to what I am putting in my body. How I ignored the junk that i eat and think that I hardly ever eat anything unhealthy. How much I ignore the fact that I was lazing around and overestimating the level of physical activity. She put in some serious effort to make me account for everything that goes inside my body. Gradually I began to make the connection. I started being more aware of my food choices and eventually I discovered that eating animal products of any kind was the real culprit. I cut out all kinds of animal products immediately and could see immediate benefits. It has been established without a doubt in modern medicine that eating animal proteins is very harmful to our bodies the only problem is not everyone is aware about the same. Once I started eating plant based products entirely my health began to improve naturally and began to be restored. You can check out the work of Dr. Michael Greger , who has poured all his knowledge in his website nutritionfacts.org

Although I gained this knowledge after a lot of hit and trial and beating around the bush. I realized that I have an incredible power over my body, based on my new found knowledge. However, being shy by nature I never bothered passing on this information to people who might need it. Specially giving someone a lecture over food choices can be extremely scary. Because food is so intricately linked with the traditions and culture and even family values that it is really difficult to get the point across without people rolling their eyes and saying please stop giving me all this new found knowledge. The food choices they make is an important part of their daily lives and if something directly conflicts our beliefs we all know how defensive we can get. We might not make the most mindful choices may be because we do not want to acknowledge the truth or because of convenience or just habit or lack of awareness, we still find it difficult to change habits especially if it's so deeply embedded in our belief system. I hated the confrontation so I chose the easy path, and never dared to make people aware about the same. I never dared to even encroach this personal space.

However once again I was drawn towards something in life that I was not really aware of before. This time it was animal cruelty. I firmly believe in a compassionate lifestyle and that compassion and empathy should be the essence of human life. I have been an animal lover most of my life and really if I could stop the animal cruelty I would banish it once and for all. However, till then I always felt that the maximum I can do is to make sure I don’t contribute to the cruelty by creating the demand for these dead bodies. I donated regularly for animal causes. But I never cared about the importance of people being aware of this grave issue. However, life has its own strange ways at handing out the next pieces of puzzle. I stumbled upon some lectures given by a famous animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky. That is when I decided I have to speak up. Before listening to him I was never really aware of the extent to which these animals are abused and mistreated. Almost as if they are nothing more than commodities. As if we own them and they belong to us. I became painfully aware that there is so much that doesn't meet our eyes and so much we are ignorant of. We hardly give a second thought before we order a bacon or chicken as meal that at some point in time it was a living being before it was merciless slaughtered to be served before us. I was shocked to the very core of my being after watching some undercover investigation videos of these slaughter houses. I cried for hours before I could finally console myself. I started doing more research and found a very interesting and famous documentary "Cowspiracy". I kept reading about the kind of cruelty these animals are being subjected to and honestly I could not comprehend how people could even come up with these horrific ideas to torture them. I decided I wanted to do something to stop this.

I read somewhere that "if only the slaughter houses were made of glass we might be having many more vegans in the world". This message was powerful, it had an impact on me and I realized the importance of spreading awareness. I started to be aware of the pain that these individuals were subjected to. I started to view the life from the perspective of the victims. How unfair they would have felt. May be all they wanted was to be loved, to be cared and to belong. May be they wanted to feel that they were part of our global family, that they existed or at least mattered. How these being never felt even a little solace in their entire lives because their only fault was that they are non-humans. How powerless they must have felt if they could never even protect their families. All they could have done must be look at the heaven and ask "Why is this happening to me" and may be the only answer they ever got must be "This will be over soon". These innocent sentient beings who never wronged us have become the target of greed of a handful of people who would go to any extent to reap short term benefits because they are mercenaries. Knowing this I just can't sit and do nothing about it. I have to spread this message and bring awareness and sensitivity towards the needs of our fellow beings.

We can either pay to take their lives or pay to save it. The question is knowing what you pay for will you continue to pay for it? We have to join hands to help the voiceless, weak and innocent. I know a massive change is difficult to bring all at once but nevertheless we should not stop trying. However, if we are aware and enlightened about the ground reality then may be we can be more impactful in helping these being who are caught up in a viscous cycle of greed. We are all in the same boat, together we sail or together we sink. We cannot let the ignorance be our enemy. Awareness is the key to help heal the bleeding mother nature who is so unfortunately forced to witness so many merciless deaths. Awareness is the key to save these innocent souls, some of whom we will never get to know. Awareness is the key to save our own soul which gets chipped away everytime we choose to turn a blind eye or pay for such a heinous crime. Truly awareness is bliss, no matter how painful the truth is. Let us all work together to spread the word to enlighten the world, to urge them to give up the old ways. Kill ignorance not living, breathing and feeling beings who can feel the pain just as much as we can. Maybe we are able to make a difference in the life of a few more individuals.

                                                                                                               From another sentient being of our planet

Animal Products: Consumers consume at your own risk

Choice, such a simple yet a powerful word. I once read somewhere that you always have the power to choose no matter what your situation is. And over time I have come to understand that if you feel you have a choice you feel incredibly empowered and it can make all the difference in your actions and eventually life. Choices can vary, from being as simple as what to eat for my next meal to being as important and complicated as deciding which field do I build my career in.  We make choices every day in our lives over and over again. Just imagine if someone told you that you have the power to solve some of the most critical and urgent issues facing mankind and fix the most horrible lifestyle related health issues all at once, all you have to do to make that happen is to make a choice.

Well, this powerful choice that I want to present to you today is your choice of what you have on your plate. Are you surprised, I was too until I got to view lectures by an amazing animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky and an award-winning documentary "Cowspiracy". But what you eat matters so much that if you choose the vegan/ vegetarian options over the nonvegetarians options you are doing not only yourself but the entire humanity and planet earth a huge favor and along with that you also get a chance to participate first hand in the attempts to save our planet. If you are wondering how , please be my audience.

First and foremost I would like to explain how turning Vegan enormously benefit your health. Some of the  most nutrient dense food available on the planet is plant based food. Plant based diet is not only extremely nutritious but also the most nurturing one. It is the diet which promises a long hale and healthy life to us, humans. Switching to a vegan diet alone can not only reverse the signs of aging but also reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, and strokes. Animal products are responsible more for causing diabetes than sugar itself. Additionally, we can cut out all the extra cholesterol is only found in animal-based foods. A vegan diet contains zero cholesterol.  Not to mention the additional antibiotics, hormones, and Human bodies are not designed to digest the animal proteins. In fact, red meat, and processed meat eaters died prematurely more frequently than other people. Studies have also shown that plant-based diets either minimize or completely eliminate people's genetic propensity to developing chronic diseases, such as diabetes type 2, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Animal products are extremely acidic and anybody with even a basic understanding of health and wellbeing knows the importance of keeping our bodies alkaline. Eating a plant-strong diet is the best way to do that . I can go on and on but I think you get the point. If you want to know more about this , I would recommend watching the talks given by Dr. Michel Greger , where he explains how easy it is to take care of our health and what  you need to do in order to preserve it.

But not just from the health perspective ,eating a vegan diet is really easy to afford too. You can save some big bucks by choosing vegetarian options. Animal products can never compete with the cheap fruits and vegetables easily available. Additionally we save a ton on the health care bills. A total win win situation

However, if you do not really care about your own health may be you care about the animals. These innocent being who have never wronged us but are subjected to extreme pain and suffering just so they could be served on your plate. They are raped, murdered and exploited every single day. The industrials farmed agriculture are nothing but slaughterhouses for these innocent creatures. When we consume meat the compassion with us dies a slow death. The animals are subjected to abuse every second by the cruel practices of debeaking , dehorning , molting , beheading, electrocuting and the third degree burns inflicted to the animals. It is beyond any normal person could even bare to be around without being traumatized. However just because of our habit of convenience, we keep paying those who do this heinous crime for us. Again it is a matter of choice, we can choose to turn a blind eye on the sufferings of these innocent creatures or we can choose to eliminate the demand for animal products thus not only putting an end to the misery they have to go through every day and also lead a much more compassionate life. Making this switch can  also clear up blockages in your energy body.

Well, you still don’t think that your choices are important, you might be surprised to know that your choice can determine the future of this planet. Just by choosing vegan / vegetarian diet we can restore the health of our planet. The biggest crises facing our generation is the scarcity of water and global warming due to the emission of greenhouse gases. Cutting down on your meat consumption can lead to the saving of the millions of litres of water used to produce meat, cutting down on air pollution and precious land resources and cut down the tons of agricultural waste. We can even end world hunger by feeding the people instead of the animals. So if our choices directly affect the very place we dwell shouldn’t we choose more responsible. It is estimated that animal agriculture contributes to close to 18% of the greenhouse gas emission which exceeds the total emission by the entire exhaust transportation. Animal agriculture water consumption ranges from 34-76 trillion gallons annually. Livestock or livestock feed occupies 1/3 of the earth’s ice-free land.  Livestock operations on land have created more than 500 nitrogen flooded dead zones around the world in our oceans . These are few of the very shocking statistics to start realising the impact of our choices.

You might find it hard to believe what I just told you but it is true. It is just a matter of choice that we make in our everyday lives that when multiplied by the billion people across the globe has a massive impact. The power is in our hands unless we “choose” to turn a blind eye on these critical issues and “choose” to blame your society and feel trapped or helpless. 

I finally want to conclude that no matter who you are, no matter where you live if you really just make the right choice every single one of us will benefit from it. We can recover our health, prevent the abuse and exploitation of the animals, live the most compassionate lifestyle, help save the planet from an extreme crisis like water scarcity, global warming and also world hunger, otherwise, karma is here to take care of these things for us. We can the results of the actions on our environment already. The time is ticking and we do have a huge margin to keep on ignoring the consequences of our actions. However, we still have a choice .We can choose the path where each one of us benefits by start making the right choices or we can choose to turn a blind eye, and live the life of denial and disregard to what is happening around us and to go back living our lives of comfort which is wreaking havoc on our planet. Do not wait for the society to catch up because many times society will deny that the problem is grave or it will give excuses as to why the change is not easy but eventually we will have to face the grave consequences of our actions as a species. I hope you understand the power that is vested in you by virtue of choice.

  

From a responsible citizen of Planet Earth

Reference :                                                                   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UROxRLbVils  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HJcq8qHAY