Archive for November, 2007
Love’s Choice
I have been very fortunate in my life not to have been confronted with many difficult choices, certainly none of the more tragic nature. I have instead, in terms of significance, been more often confronted with the reality of someone else’s choice and had only to decide how to react. But of those choices I have made, perhaps the most significant was to be married at a young age.
I never had any intention of getting married young. In fact, I never intended to get married at all, my ideas of love and marriage being tucked neatly away in the pages of a book, never more than a romantic story or an anecdote. Naturally, I believed that a proposal would eventually be considered, although I neither expected nor desired it. I simply allowed the possibility to drift somewhere in the very distant future, settling politely behind all my goals and ambitions, and even my dreams. It seemed perfectly logical that in order to accomplish one’s goals one had to retain absolute independence, a task which would prove most difficult were love or marriage involved. And so it was very inconvenient that in my junior year of high school, at the very young age of 16, I met the extraordinary young gentleman who was to become my husband.
I would like to say that we met, fell in love, and we lived happily ever after, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Instead, we met, he fell in love, and I ran quickly away. I drove away, actually, moved to another state and effectively ended the romantic relationship. We remained friends however, as the young man was reluctant to break all ties. One might think that a long-distance friendship could hardly be dangerous to the sensibility of single life, but one would be wrong.
It crept upon me rather unexpectedly, a peculiar desire to hear his voice, a strange inclination to ask about his day. I would probably never have noticed the absentminded addiction except that it was abruptly interrupted for an interval of time I was unaccustomed to. Unable to account for the interruption, and fearing the worst (another girl!), I became panic stricken. Having already made plans to spend the summer traveling, I found it rather convenient to call on him in an attempt to regain his affections, something, it would seem, I desired after all. And so there I found myself, at the age of 19, allowing silly sentiments to chip away at my earlier resolve.
I knew with certainty that regaining the young man’s affections would be analogous to marriage. A part of me imagined it a death warrant, a surrender of my ambitions, a sacrifice of my dreams. To die for love is a romantic notion to be sure, but not terribly practical. And yet, life without love no longer held the same appeal. To love or not to love, that was the question. And in the end, I decided that while I certainly could live without love, I simply did not want to. We married two years later, he at the age of 22, and I at 21, an age ironically fancied as tantamount to adolescent liberation.
As was to be expected, my life changed dramatically. I could no longer make plans to attend a university across the country. I could no longer expect to study abroad or volunteer for an international development charity for extended periods of time. My life now had to be filtered in anticipation of my spouse and executed at the side of him. Indeed, it is a sacrifice to be made at such a young age and for someone so independent. But even more often, the sacrifice of abstract desires is outweighed by the overwhelming benefit of love, friendship, compatibility, support, and encouragement. Perhaps such a recollection of significant choice seems a silly one. Love is so cliché. But love is, after all, the whole point.
Anti-PETA Pet Peeve
While catching up on my bloglines subscriptions tonight (or trying to catch up as I still have 1261 articles unread), I read an interesting opinion article at Modestly Yours titled My PETA Pet Peeve. This was even more particularly interesting because I recently had a question posed to me regarding this same subject on 43Things. Upon reading the article however, and its subsequent comments, I felt there were a lot of false implications being made. And of course, I had to put my two shiny pennies in:
There are several implications within this post and its subsequent comments that I feel need to be addressed.
First, there seems to be an excessive amount of dislike for PETA, and perhaps rightly so. PETA has perpetrated the mass slaughter of homeless animals and has also used excessive and often inappropriate tactics against people they feel violate animal ethics. For such reasons as these, I, as a animal-welfare advocate and vegetarian, do NOT actively “support” PETA, as I am sure you will find is the case for a majority of animal-welfare/rights activists. It is important than not to conflate the one with the other.
Second, there seems to be some implied correlation being made between nudity and immorality. While I agree that many times nudity is used in an unethical way (i.e. it is not within an appropriate context) there are also occasions when nudity can be quite effective. In this campaign “Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”, nudity is an effective means of symbolism, correlating skin with fur, and compelling the viewer to identify with the vulnerability of animals. Alicia Silverstone’s advertisement is actually very tastefully done. Yes she is nude. It’s natural! It’s the point! How much of this assumed sexuality then is assigned because of her gender? Is there a way in which her nudity could have been depicted that would have been more appropriate? Or is nudity the issue? If so, than the issue is bigger than PETA. It is an issue with history. It is an issue with art. It is an issue with the human body.
Lastly, there are several parallels being made between killing animals and abortion. I have to agree with M. Landers – these are two entirely different issues. I agree that to value an animal’s life and not that of a human’s is irrational. But I also find it irrational that someone can value the “life” of a fetus and not recognize the life of an independently living and breathing animal. Nonetheless, as M. Landers puts it so eloquently, “To value the life of an animal and to disagree that a fetus constitutes a full human life is another matter entirely.”
Additionally, in response to Grace’s accusation that “They would rather rescue a bunch of lab rats, than ever see a cure for cancer or AIDS” I would like to quote C.S. Lewis: “Vivisection can only be defended by showing it to be right that one species should suffer in order that another species be happier … If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.”
Other relevant quotes:
Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research. – George Bernard Shaw
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. – Plutarch
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. – Alice Walker
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals. – Theodor Adorno
Additionally, there was one particular comment (partially qtd. in italics) made regarding Alicia Silverstone’s article that I felt was completely off-base:
Not only does this sound like an infomercial, but it still doesn’t explain why she took her clothes off. If the best things about her going vegan were her nails and her skin, couldn’t we have just seen a shot of her skinny arm holding a boca burger?
To reduce Alicia’s comments to a narrow clip and biased quip is a complete misrepresentation. Alicia stated the physical benefits she experienced being vegan and went on to say: “I feel physically and spiritually better than I could have ever imagined knowing that I am doing everything I can to reduce animal suffering with simple lifestyle choices like being vegan, never wearing any products made from animals (like wool and leather), and buying only from companies that NEVER test their products or ingredients on animals.”
To criticize Alicia’s methods of politicization and then manipulate the context seems hypocritical.
