14 FEB 2016! (EARTHLINGS REVIEW)

It’s February 14th or also known as Valentine’s Day today. Being single, I decided that I would be getting myself a gift in line with the concept of self-care promoted by Valorie Burton in her book, “How Did I Get So Busy?”. What did I get for myself? The time to watch a film I have been putting off due to other priorities.

Some of you may know that I sampled a vegan diet in the month of December last year. I did it after researching some of its benefits for sports and decided to try it out. The most rewarding lesson  I got from that experiment was the discipline to maintain a difficult change in my life and it has helped me to cultivate other more rewarding habits since.

One of the reasons I stopped my diet was because it is hard to go on a diet while not living independently. However, the main factor that caused me to stop was because I was not wholly educated on the vegetarian and vegan lifestyles and the reasons behind it. I did not commit to it long-term and when I did not see the immediate effects in my sports performance, I stopped.

Today, I decided to take a step towards educating myself about vegetarianism and a vegan lifestyle by watching a documentary called Earthlings.

I first heard about this documentary in an article by Stephen Gray on Medium titled “Why I Went Vegetarian”. Many other sources have also listed this documentary as the reason why they adopted a vegetarian or vegan diet. I however put off watching the documentary since last year due to other priorities and simply because I generally do not like documentaries 😛 I decided to watch Earthlings today after being reminded about the documentary in an Artball interview with Tom Folan (one of my favorite freestylers who is a vegan).

So after watching Earthlings, here are some of the thoughts I have:

1. I am never going to look at food (especially non-vegetarian food) the same way again
2. I will not be consciously buying any leather products
3. I will not willingly go to circuses or zoos ever again

Thoughts 2 and 3 are relatively easy to apply in my life, but as for the application from thought 1, it may be a little more difficult. I will be TRYING to stay away from animal products for the time being of course but I will not be going all out and go on another diet for the foreseeable future simply because I do not have the means to do so. Not living independently means I have to think about others when it comes to my eating habits. It is not always easy to prepare my own meals when eating together as a family indoors. It takes a lot of time and effort to prepare my own meals as I found out last December. I also have a long way to go in terms of my cooking skills. However, I am in the conscious process of learning to one day be a vegetarian and then maybe a vegan. For now, not being ignorant of the facts the media is hiding from us is enough.

DON’T LISTEN TO EVERYTHING I SAY, WATCH IT FOR YOURSELVES!

If you are not interested in being a vegetarian or vegan, it’s alright. I still suggest you watch Earthlings simply for the challenge of being able to watch beyond the 40 minute mark. If you do not have time to watch the whole documentary, I suggest you watch from about the 18th minute to the 45th minute. Stay informed and happy Valentine’s Day!

Link to watch Earthlings:

NOTE: Watch at your own risk! Leave a comment or message me if you managed to watch the whole documentary without turning it off.