Hey blog!
It’s good to be back here, honestly. I wanted to write something so much but everything was just a mess in my head and I couldn’t organize them carefully to create a complete, meaningful entry. Hence there is now a mess of drafts in my dashboard and none was ever touched more than once. So I decided I should complete this one post, also as a way to celebrate Halloween (and Hari Raya and Depavali).
One of the reasons why I couldn’t complete any entry was because of the GP result I got. It made me feel so unconfident. No matter how many times I told myself “the grade doesn’t mean anything, it’s just an exam and it’s not accurate”, I couldn’t help thinking deep down inside that it does mean something. That makes every words I’ve written seem crappy and meaningless, at least to myself. So today, I took all the courage I could have and get back here one more time…
This entry is about some big decision I recently made: I want to be a vegetarian.
Actually I’m already doing that. I eat as a vegetarian about 4-5 days a week and eat meat occasionally. I will become a complete vegetarian soon I guess.
It feels different, good different. After not eating meat for some time, meat just does not seem appealing to me anymore. So it became a sort of habit. I guess it was a change of mind, which leads to a change in appetite. There is a very complicated chain of thoughts behind this that I have not quite figured out myself, but I’ll try my best to convey it.
First of all, I started off wondering what life is about. I guess I always defined “life” to myself as anything that moves and/or grows. But why is it so precious? Why do we value life so much? Why is it that each of us feel that it’s a privilege to be living in this world? Why is it that the end of other creature’s life sadden us?
I was taking a shower today, and when I was washing my bra, I realized that a small spider got stuck in it. It was gross having a spider on my bra but strangely I did not think about that at all. All I thought about was that the spider was drowning and I have got to help it. So I flicked it. The spider landed safely on the bathroom wall. It crawled around for a while but it did not move far away. I don’t know if it was injured or was just not smart enough to move away from the wet area of the wall, but the spider just move about the same spot helplessly, and after a while it did not move anymore. It got caught in a big drop of water and was drowned. The spider stopped moving and stayed in a very awkward poise with its legs in the air. It was such a tiny spider and it made me sad. Well at least I know it was not painful for the spider because for all I know, its nervous system does not allow it to feel such a thing as “pain” (I hope I’m not wrong…). But that moment, it occurred to be that life is so fragile. Such a blink of an eye and ‘pop’, out like a light.
I wonder if that spider is really “living”, or just “existing”. After questioning what life is and considering its definition again and again, I decided that “life” should go along with “consciousness”, and maybe, maybe only, “intelligence”. With that being said, something that is moving or growing might not necessarily be living.
I read an article the other day about intelligence of animals. It gave me a pretty broad picture about how different animals have different intelligence levels. So if I use my definition of living as associated with “consciousness” or “intelligence”, then something as a, let’s say, mussel should not have “life” as it does everything according to reflexes. There is no awareness or thinking whatsoever. So in this scale human is obviously the highest order of life there is. We are even gifted with extra traits such as imagination, humor, etc.
This keep me thinking, the “food” I eat everyday, pork, beef, chicken… they are all from living things. Those things used to be moving about, being aware that they are alive and faced the fear and pain of being killed to become food. Some are even smart enough to have certain thoughts and feel certain emotions. For certain all those animals are ranked pretty highly in the intelligence scale. Even birds like chicken, pigeon, owl have been proven to be capable of using tools. Research has shown that pigs are able to feel positive and negative emotions. With all this being said, it’s just heart breaking to see all these creatures, all these living things have to end their lives to be some other species’ food. Yeah I know it’s the way life works. It’s nature. The stronger ones will survive on the smaller ones and then they all die to become food for the tiny ones (bacteria is it?). And nature will work in its most miraculous ways to keep everything in balance. But I just could not stand the thought. It’s heart breaking to even imagine that those animals are killed. Sometimes i even think that human beings are such cruel creatures. At times that thought came like a fact to me. Well I have nothing to blame on. Some people are even killing other fellow people, what should I say?
Having such impressions about “life” makes me feel wrong whenever I eat meat. If Evolution is indeed true, I wonder why the ancient human beings started eating meat at all, from fruit-eating apes. It’s so strange… so so strange…
I guess it’s hard to follow my thoughts as they are often very messy and come from the most unlikely times. But I hope you know what I mean…
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Anyway, I hope to come up with a new book review or movie review soon. When I’m in the mood for that.
See ya! 🙂
Chaotic world 