Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.
If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.
Tao te Ching
——————-
I want to kill a chicken.
At first sight, that confession may seem like a good anecdote for the true-crime novel that might someday be written about my life. But there is actually a wholesome and pure motivation behind my bloodthirsty desires.
I believe we are dangerously disconnected from our food. And if I’m going to be a meat eater (and yes, I am, have no doubts) I need to truly understand the source of that meat. Its origins. Its holy place in the revolving circle of life. Many of us city-folk are so separated from the source of our nourishment we believe that meat comes neatly packed in Styrofoam and plastic wrap, as cleanly prepared as a bag of frozen broccoli or a box of crackers. I find this profoundly disrespectful to the animal that feeds us. It’s criminally callous.
My need to acknowledge and participate in the food chain in a more intimate way started almost 10 years ago. When my daughter was 8, she said she wanted chicken for dinner. When I pulled some from the freezer, she said “No, that other chicken. The steak kind.” I realized that for her the word “chicken” was synonymous with “meat.” I carefully explained the difference between chicken and beef based on the animal it came from.
She was understandably horrified.
She had never known what meat really was. She vowed eternal vegetarianism (until a few weeks later when she was visiting with her dad and he taunted her with the smell of cooking bacon). While on one hand it’s kind of an amusing story of childhood semantics, it stuck with me. She was so saddened to know that meat was animals. And I realized that for many of us, although we can identify “beef,” “poultry,” and “pork,” we are almost as poorly educated as to the true meaning behind the names. I had been deluding myself, keeping myself from facing the reality of it. I just never thought about it. Intentional ignorance may sooth the soul, but it’s as valuable as good intentions for keeping us from hell.
And so I feel I must kill a chicken.
If I find myself unwilling to face the animal and cleanly end his life, then I must also find myself unwilling to enjoy him (broiled or baked) on my dinner plate. I have a responsibility to the universe to cherish the life enough to admit it exists in the first place. If I refuse to do that, I am more cold-blooded and heartless than any sociopathic killer. I am merely a profiteer, benefiting from those who are willing to get their hands dirty on my behalf, while metaphorically and literally keeping my own clean. Shameful.
Many folks would simply advise vegetarianism as an alternative to murder. But as I examine my incisors, my canines, and my molars, not to mention my single-stomached digestive system, I have to recognize that I am designed by the universe to be omnivorous. I require lipids and proteins. And as I will discuss in a future blog, artificially synthesized versions of any food are as far removed from healthy eating as Styrofoam and plastic wrap. You might as well just eat the packaging.
Besides, as long as there is filet mignon topped with melted blue cheese, as long as there is the smell of turkey roasting in the oven, as long as apples and onions can transform pork into manna, and as long as rosemary grows for the sole purpose of turning my chicken into an aromatic heavenly delight, I will be an eater of meat.
We’ll leave my leather shoes for another debate.
Up the Tao Staircase 
maybe you should pick on someone your own size, like a cow?
Have you seen my ass? I’d need a brontosaurus before it became a truly fair fight.
But just in case someday you are stranded on a desert island with another person with no food and you need to survive – should you practice that too?
Maybe you and I should go sailing…
I totally understand what you are saying. I was about 30 when I agreed to help my dad “process” some turkeys he had raised for the first time. Its not “processing”, it’s chopping heads off and cleaning guts out and pulling feathers with bloody jelly attached to them. Nasty, smelly work… its not often you watch something die at your own hand. We kept it as gentle and respectful as possible – which got me thinking of slaughter houses were there is no gentleness or respect.
Its fine to eat meat, if that’s what is right for you, but looking the animal in the eye before you decide to end its life gives you a whole new appreciation for food. There was no left over turkey being thrown out after the next holiday dinner.
Thank you for sharing your story. I imagine I might have a similar experience. Who knows, I may shift my dietary focus. Until I take that step and participate in the process, I feel that I remain unforgivably ignorant.
As someone who has raised their own animals (turkeys, chickens, cows) and whose family has raised foxes to sell their fur, I have to say… it didn’t make a lot of difference to me.
This may be because I was so young, and this is just ‘what was done.’ They were raised to be eaten, so, life purpose fulfilled. I can see the debate rising in your conscience once you actually think about it, and have gotten all your meat from a grocery store. Personally, I prefer not to know where the meat comes from. I would rather walk into the local grocery store and get the shrink wrapped steaks and vacuum sealed chicken.. locally grown, of course. Prepping them yourself is just too labour intensive. But I won’t eat wild game.. go figure?
People really have to consider both sides to an issue before judging. I am also pro seal hunt, so I guess that makes me evil personified. Please research before lighting the fire on my stake.
I can’t judge anybody else’s stance on these issues because I don’t have the same experiences to go on. Any opinion that I’m given is an opportunity for me to learn something new.
Thanks for sharing – I always appreciate it.
A friend of mine, who is quite the outdoorsman, likes to say that, “Killing animals is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.”
One of my many jobs in my murky past was in a slaughter house. While I didn’t work on the kill floor I did go through there quite often. It does make you appreciate more what has to happen in order for you to enjoy that steak dinner.