Throughout my high school career I met thousands and thousands of people- in school, at dances, at clubs, at restaurants, at parties, at the mall, at the movies, through friends...etc. Those few people who stood out the most to me, were those who were predominantly rude or loving.
Rude Ignorance And Loving Wisdom
One event, in particular, that has attached itself very well in my memory, occurred my junior year of high school (2010). I simply strolled down the unnaturally-empty main hallway of my school during seventh period, heading to the west entrance of the school (where the student parking lot contained my car and the hundreds of other students who had a driver's license). The hallway was, I would say, about twenty to fifteen feet wide lined with elegant-marble flooring. The hallways can comfortably accommodate the thousands of students that slowly group up and migrate around each other in the passing periods between classes. The hallway always seemed to be awkwardly huge without the thousands of students residing within them. As I got closer to exiting the west entrance to the building, I was bombarded with a group of five jocks. Apparently feeling like they did not have enough walking space, two changed their paths to the right of mine while the other three were lined side-by-side on the left of my path. As they got closer, the two closest to either side of me shoulder-checked me, nearly knocking me completely on my butt. But because I had, at that point, three years of dance experience under my belt (dance requires great amounts of balance and coordination), so I managed to keep myself from falling backwards. Automatically, I mentally prepared my self to attempt to defend myself from being jumped by the five of them. Luckily, instead of risking expulsion, the jocks decided to continue slowly down the hall while one of them called out demeaning-ly, "next time move out of our way you faggot." I knew that the jocks didn't use the word faggot very often, I had known four of them since first grade. The reason they used that word, was for one specific reason --I had come out of the closet in my creative writing class through the pieces of poetry, letters, and many other forms of writing I produced for my portfolio. One of those jocks, that used to be one of my best friends, also was in that creative writing class. As you could easily assume, he told the other jocks that disparage people as a sport.
A week or two later I came out to my dance instructor, who was straight. Her name was Katie, and she had recently got married to the man of her dreams. Katie was about 5'1" with her brown hair professionally put up in a bun and her body was very skinny (dancers tend to be stick-thin...oh no, now I am stereotyping!). She was easily comforting, caring, and compassionate towards the subject-matter. As if I were her own child that she loved more than anything else in the world, she confidently told me to always be yourself, push further than your own standards for success, and remember: homosexuality does not define who you are, it is only a mere fact about your sexual preference. Feeling almost meditated, I let those words sink into my heart and I felt whole, like the world was not going to be disastrous because I was yet another ignorantly-hated minority on this earth.--This was the beginning of a big change the way I viewed the world.
Carnivores and Herbivores
Continuing to create stereo-types, I have come to a conclusion that our personalities directly relate to what we eat.
Those who eat meat lavishly, tend to gain the traits of ignorance of many things in life, aggressive behavior, and personal arrogance. As it has seemed to be, those who eat meat with almost every meal, and would dislike almost any meal without the presence of it, tend to be completely rude.
My parents are a prime example of my new theory. Throughout the beginning of my childhood my father was missing. When he was present he tended to be drunk, which constituted to verbal and physical abuse for my entire family. As he finally got out of his drinking habit, he was not as bad, but still very judgmental of others race, sexuality, religion, etc. It was always embarrassing to be around this ignorant and aggressive behavior, so I tended to avoid him when I could. Take one guess as to what he favored most in his diet. Meat. My father absolutely loves him some moist steak or steamy pork-chops. However, my mother has never had a big appetite for meat.
My mother taught me how to be a true gentleman, how to cry, how to love, and how to succeed, and so much more. She is a lovely person who does not criticize anyone for anything. As she taught me very well, there is never a reason to be mean, hurtful, or judgmental of others because what if you were in his or her shoes. How bad would you feel if you had their disability, disfigurement, personality, color, etc.? you would be really depressed if you were different and others made fun of you. As you could have guessed, my mother is very sparing with her choices of meat. She prefers chicken or turkey over cow or pig, and always has a pasta, vegetables, or a salad to accommodate at least two-thirds of the meal.
Thinking back, those jocks tended to go out to the McDonald's or Jack-In-The-Box down the street, eating hamburgers, tacos, and the like for lunch. And on the other end my dance instructor, Katie, always had an organic and meat-less meal when we went out and grabbed something to eat when we had long rehearsals. She was vegetarian. So we can continue to argue that those who eat meat do not promote the well-being of themselves or others as vastly as vegetarians.
Belittling Bums And Morphing Minds
After recalling the many memories of rude and loving people, I was able to correlate the personality of some of the people with his or her diet that I could recall. I definitely do not intend to say the every person's diet attributes to his or her personality, but to say that a person's personality tends to rule the choice in diet.
In my diet, I have always tended to avoid eating more than small portions of meat, if not avoiding the meat part entirely. My identical twin, however, has a good appetite for meat. Growing up, I was always more sensitive and caring about everything, down to even trying to save the ants he would try to kill with a magnifying glass. Our personalities definitely had a correlation with our appetite for meat.
After years of finding myself, finding my love, finding what matters most to me, I have changed my diet to accommodate less and less meat. Though I have not gotten rid of it completely yet, mainly because I am still somewhat ignorant of how to get sufficient nutrients, being vegetarian is very difficult. I have overall become a very caring and compassionate person towards others, I surrendered over 500 hours during my high school career towards volunteering for the elderly. I have become almost completely organic, in a sense that I do not contain the normal pesticides and hormones of a typical crop, but I have been grown naturally to be a be a beautifully grown crop that benefits the environment around it and the people that need it.
Though, I have changed a good amount, not every person makes this sort of change. There are still those individuals in each person's life that love to eat meat more than they could love to read a book, someone or something, or even to be empathetic or sympathetic of others. And most of those people may never change; they will forever be belittling bums. But those people who will positively affect the community around them (humans, animals, environment, etc.) will forever be morphing minds to benefit others, as well as his or her own well-being.
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