With Every Beat of My Wings I Change the World
People love to point out to me that I am never going to turn everyone in the world into vegetarians. I am never sure how to respond, because I see this as a question of ignorance.
First of all, this is so clearly not my goal (not that I wouldn’t love to live in this world). My point in speaking about my choices is to educate people in hopes of lessening the impact that we as human beings make in general. My goal - albeit immeasurable - would be better stated as: to cause one person to think before eating each day, to have one more veg*n meal prepared and one less meat entree served.
Secondly, would we ever accomplish anything in life if we constantly told ourselves that there was no point unless we could achieve 100 percent?
Sometimes it’s good to try something new just once. Sometimes we need to decide to quit (as I did - and don’t regret doing - with graduate school). And sometimes we need to recognize that each person’s life that we touch makes a difference.
If I reach five people today by writing this, then they each log off, and cook their family a veggie meal, and then the next day they all tell their friends and co-workers about their delicious meat-free meal, then those friends go home and try the recipe out on their family …
See? It’s a chain reaction. People are sociable creatures and by reaching five people, I may just be reaching 25, 50, or more.
It’s the butterfly effect (and no, I don’t mean Ashton Kutcher’s time traveling flick). Even the tiny beat of a single butterfly’s wings could cause or prevent a tornado.
So for the nay-sayers, I have my response: I may only be a single butterfly, beating wings amongst a world whose flight plan tends to head in the opposite direction, but even I can create a tornado. So watch out world, there’s a storm a brewin’.
butterfly effect, ashton kutcher, how to make a difference, even i can make a difference, change the world, vegetarians impact, vegan world
August 31st, 2007 at 11:15 am
[...] Winds Begin to Stir by Sally Andersen Relating to what I wrote yesterday, here is an example of how my beating wings are beginning to spread compassion and knowledge. This [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:54 am
[...] Without Meat / Style Fix presents With Every Beat of My Wings I Change the World -posted at Living Without [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
[...] by Sally Andersen On August 30, I wrote about changing the world with even the smallest action in With Every Beat of My Wings I Change the World. I brought up the theory of the butterfly effect, which plays on the notion of sensitive dependence [...]