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