the omnivore dilemma

Everyone who knows me knows that I love eating meat.
I LOVE it.
Especially red meat. It's one of my favorite things.
I crave it. I have a very difficult time eating even one meal without some sort of meat.
Maybe it's just because of how I was raised. Where I grew up, it would have been a massive joke to be a vegetarian. And "vegan" wasn't even heard of. We figured they were all just weirdo, hippie pansies who wrote emo poems, couldn't play sports and smelled like patchouli... but I figured at least it saved them the trouble of having to tell their parents they were gay.
I had never met anyone who was vegetarian until I went to college, really until grad school. And unfortunately then many of them (even some close friends) were militantly vegan; They were extremely condescending and insulting to people who did not share their beliefs. I became the one, particularly in the lesbian community, who was the weirdo. To them, I was some insensitive barbarian who probably watched NASCAR, ran a cock-fighting ring and skinned kittens for fun. Eating dinner with them doesn't make me want to eat less meat. It just makes me want to talk to them less.
My judgey veggie friends scoff at me when I claim to love animals. I couldn't possibly love them and eat them. I understand how those things seem mutually exclusive. Yet, they're not. I do love them. I don't ever want them to suffer or be mistreated.
But I still want to eat them.
Not all of them, just the cows, chickens and fish... but I even love those ones. And, not that it matters (but somehow in the minds of meat-eaters it does) I'm not the one who killed them. I have killed fish... and worms in the process. I was a kid, and I felt bad about it. Watching them gasp for air was painful. The elderly couple who we called Aunt and Uncle loved to fish with us. To cut short their suffering they would bash them in the head with a rock. I was always shocked to see such bloody violence from such kind and gentle people, but my mother told me it was more humane than letting them suffocate slowly on the stringer like we did.
I've smooshed some bugs and spiders, though not many recently. I accidentally hit a rabbit with my car once. And a couple of birds hit me. Poor aquarium-keeping (despite my very best efforts) killed many lovely saltwater creatures. Other than these, I have not directly killed anything.
I have never killed a cow or a chicken, or a deer or en elk. My father always wanted me to go bow-hunting with him, but I knew I couldn't look into those big brown eyes and let an arrow fly. My militant friends say, and rightly so, that if I want to eat an animal I should have to look it in the face and kill it myself.
If I had to do that... I'm not sure what I would do.
There are certainly people far more suited for killing than I am.

Listening to so many Buddhist lectures forces me to think about my meat-eating. The Tibetan people commonly wear medical masks to avoid accidentally inhaling bugs. You often see them with small brooms, sweeping the path in front of them as they walk so that no ants are inadvertently crushed.
Buddhists believe that every one of the trillions of sentient beings - from mosquitos to krill to germs to ghosts to cows and chickens - has a mind just like we do. The mosquito you swat might be your deceased mother. The cow you kill might be your future son. The dog you adopt could be your mortal enemy. And when you pass away, you better hope you're not reincarnated as one of Colonel Sander's poor, poor chickens.

If I accept this theory of reincarnation, I shouldn't be partaking in anything that encourages the taking of any life. In our society it's pretty difficult to do. The medical treatments we undergo have all been tested on animals. Anesthesia contains eggs. Our sneakers are made from cowhides. Our footballs are made from pigskins. Things like wine, orange juice, chewing gum, toothpaste, tortillas, even "non-dairy" creamer are not vegan. Tattoo ink, beer... not to mention big juicy steaks... none of my favorite things are vegan!
It's kind of a sad realization, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to want to give those things up.

In my mind, animals eating each other has always been a part of the natural order of the universe. The circle of life and whatnot. I don't think it's wrong.
As a kid, I was taught that animals are sacred. My father refused to hunt with anything other than a bow and arrow. He didn't feel that gun hunting was anything to feel good about. "You walk into the woods and blast a deer to pieces with a shotgun. Where's the sport in that? He doesn't have a chance."
Every year in September my father would kill one deer and one elk, always with his bow and arrow. We usually processed them ourselves, chopping away at the creature on the kitchen table. We neatly packed small steaks in butcher's paper and labeled them in sharpie. For the next year, the meat in the stand alone freezer was what we ate. That, along with the salmon dad would snag all winter after augering through the ice.
Though he was sometimes a bastard, my father believed in treating animals with the same respect that the Native Americans showed them. I learned that from him, and I admired him for it. He taught me that every animal was an important, meaningful creature with a soul. And if one animal is sacrificed to feed another, the animal should be honored in prayer. It should be revered and thanked for it's priceless sacrifice.

Humans are not "the top of the food chain," like many self-righteous carnivores claim. We are simply such destructive creatures that we have removed all natural threats from our habitats (and them from theirs). Place a human in the rainforest, or on the plains of Africa or in the Siberian mountains and we would be a snack within the week. We're slow, weak, we can't see at night, our senses are all sub-par, and we succumb to temperature very quickly. We're flimsy animals, flourishing only because of our brains: our ability to use tools and teamwork. We're not the great kings of the earth. We lucked out.

I believe in showing respect to all animals. I don't think that, under any circumstances, an animals should be abused or neglected. Factory farming is horrifying in the truest sense. Animals are kept in deplorable conditions, tortured and genetically altered in unthinkable ways. That is *wrong*.
And I should not patronize these places.
I've become more aware of the things I eat. Buying organic, locally farmed, cage-free eggs and meats.
I think (all) animals should live a happy life while they are alive and die painlessly when they die. Hey, that's all I ask for.

Am I going to stop eating meat? No. I don't want to. Does that make me unable to be a Buddhist? Maybe it does. I'm sure it would to anyone who considers themselves devout.
But that won't deter me from trying to be a good Buddhist and a good person. And I suppose I can still do many things to minimize the damage I do in the world.