When I was about 10 years old, I made a slingshot. I lived next to a field, so I went on a rampage zinging pebbles at this and that. At one point, a mockingbird lighted about 20 feet away from me. After several hours of missing what I was aiming at, I was operating under the assumption that anything I took aim at had nothing to worry about. I pulled back the pebble and sent it in the general direction of the mockingbird.
Instead of flying away in alarm, the bird crumpled and dropped. I was horrified. Never in my life have I so wanted to turn back time. It was my first real experience of what killing was. To see this miraculous being transformed in an instant into an inert wad of feathers and blood that would never fly or sing again was a visceral shock. Yes, I knew that that’s the eventuality of all creatures, but I discovered that something in my human makeup didn’t want to be the cause of it.
I resolved than and there not to eat meat again. I told my mother so, but without telling her the reason. For over a year, i stuck to that resolution, but was undone by a cheeseburger at a family cookout (urged on by an uncle who seemed particularly annoyed by my stance).
Almost 20 years later, I recognized that my aversion to killing hadn’t actually gone away, but had just been bound and gagged and shoved into some mental closet. I had reached a point in my life when I was ready to face that being true to my sense of compassion was more important to me than whatever convenience and pleasure meat contributed to my life. I again stopped eating meat, and did indeed find that the relief from that inner dissonance was more than enough to compensate the loss of just one of many pleasures in my life.
I haven’t eaten meat for 20 years now, and no longer miss it in the last. There are so many wonderful things to eat in this world that don’t involve causing so much waste and suffering.