March 8, 2000 ~ A Star Thrower

I had to write a paper for a class about answering the following question:

"Do you consider that you have an ethical/spiritual relationship with the food you eat? If you do, how does that relationship influence your diet, your buying of food, etc.?"

I usually shy away from talking about my diet at all, because it makes others uncomfortable in a variety of ways. I am always afraid that the moment that I say, "Vegan," whomever I am talking to will automatically assume that I think I am somehow superior because of my restricted diet... I honestly don't feel that way. I believe that people need to develop their own relationships and connections with their environments and sustenance. They need to think it through for themselves and find what is right for them. What are their moral convictions?

I hate it when I sound preachy or arrogant. I hope I didn't come off like that.

Here is the piece.

The Struggle to Be a Star Thrower

In an Internet adaptation of Loren Eiseley's short story "The Star Thrower," an old man, bitter with life, walked along a seashore in the early morning. He watched as the shell collectors scoured the beach, grabbed the live sea animals that had been abandoned by the waves, and dropped them into the pots of boiling water without a second thought. There the shell-creatures were left to boil—still alive—out of their beautiful shells. The collectors were interested only in the fact that people would pay for the attractive shells that the collectors had found—or stolen.

As the old man walked, he noticed a rainbow in the distance, and perceived, amid its colors where it touched the sands of the beach in the early morning light, a small figure who seemed to be stooping down and picking things up, then throwing them into the sea. As the man drew closer, he realized that the figure was a young boy, who was reaching down and picking up the starfish—-the same types of sea creatures the others were dropping into the boiling pots. He would take these stars and toss them back out into the ocean, star after star. As the boy moved, the light and the rainbow played about His head.

"Why do you throw these stars?" the old man asked. "You will never save them all. They will all die in the end, and so many die every day. It doesn't matter."

The boy picked up another star. "It matters to this one," He said, as He threw it to the waters.

The bitter old man stooped over and joined Him in His quest to save all the stars, and he, too, became a Star-thrower.

* * *

My mother hated bugs, spiders, flies, moths, worms, and all other manner of small creeping creatures. I remember countless times in my childhood when one of the above managed to get into the house. At these times, my mother would demand that I kill it. She would throw shoes and other blunt objects at it from across the room, and I would run forward. Contrary to her wishes, however, I would cup the poor creature in my hands, running for the nearest door to release it, my mother yelling after me. Upon my return, my mother would lecture me, telling me that it was sure to get back inside, and since it was where it didn't belong in the first place—in our house—it deserved to die. I could not understand why I was being punished for saving life.

I suppose I still do not understand, for I continue to strive to save all the bugs and spiders, despite what my parents taught me.

One day, near the age of four, I was playing in the back yard, when I noticed a small butterfly stuck in a spider's web. White wings struggled against the silken net. I grabbed it by a wing to set it free, and set it free I did, but it fell to the ground and flopped around, flying in small spurts. Had I but known the fragile nature of those powdered wings. My grandmother had noticed my action and told me, gently and sadly, that it would not live because I had touched its wings. If one touches a butterfly's wings, she explained, the powder is rubbed off, and the butterfly loses its ability to fly. I cried a great deal that afternoon. I had brought about the death of a creature, in an attempt to save its life. A hard lesson for a child to learn.

As I grew older, I realized that everything dies, no matter what. There are cycles of death. Something has to die for that spider on that web to eat, be it a butterfly or a few gnats. I stole the spider's dinner by freeing the butterfly.

The moral of the Star Thrower lies intertwined in these childhood memories. The power and good lies in the fact that I, as a small child, was trying my best to save life. I may not have always succeeded, but I knew what is important: life is.

As I reached adolescence, I slowly realized that the food my parents placed on the table before me had once been a living creatures too, just like those butterflies and spiders. I had all along been mindlessly eating the life that I had always seen as sacred, and would never have killed with my own hands. I was disconnected from the deaths, but, still, deaths they remained. Faced with my own hypocrisy, a stormy turmoil began to rage within. I made excuses to sooth the self-hatred I was forming. I can do nothing about it. I have no control over what my parents make me eat, I thought.

More knowledge came with age. The animals I ate not only died brutally without honor and respect, but also most came from factory farms where their lives had been spent in miserable conditions. Every mouthful was causing great suffering.

I moved out of my parents' house, and my excuses no longer applied. I slowly cut red meat out of my diet, and then, later, all meat. Environmental causes were added to my concern for the loss of sacred life. My living, however, was still far from cruelty free. I still ate eggs, and things cooked with butter in them. In a round about way, the consumption of those commodities still led to the cruel, practically unspeakable living conditions of chickens and cows. I knew veganism was a possibility, but I told myself that it is extremely difficult to be a vegan since I am anemic and was unable to cook for myself.

When I moved to Warren Wilson, I was often haunted by feelings of guilt because of the fact that the cafeteria made it possible for even a vegan to get a well balanced diet, but I was still eating vegetarian. I finally decided to try it for a week to see how it went. I was ashamed by my selfishness. I craved cheese for the superficial reason that it tastes good. I wanted chocolate for the same reasons, but most chocolate has milk within. The end of the week came, however, and I realized that the vegan diet wasn't as hard as I had feared. I have since been a vegan, despite the fact that I miss the taste of cheese and chocolate.

In the past, my relationship with my food had always been a spiritually guilty one. I was guilty for the loss of life, I was guilty for the suffering, and I was guilty for the lack of connection between my life and the animals' lives. I was shamed by my own hypocrisy. I knew that I could not look an animal in the eye and kill it.

I slowly took the things that caused suffering out of my practice, so that my eating habits would reflect my actions towards spiders and bugs. I am not so naive to think that my habits now are cruelty free, however. The chain can always be taken one step further. One small example is that eating all sorts of fruits and vegetables supports the oppression and cruel, violent, torture, rape, and deaths of thousands of Guatemalan peasants and church leaders, in a round about way. This, of course, applies mostly to North Americans, but there are probably plenty of evils attached to the supply of food for just about any region of the world. Unless you buy from local organic farms, you are causing harm no matter what you eat. Even then, the plow probably unintentionally kills millions of insects.

I am a poverty stricken college student. I can barely scrape by just paying the tuition and board, which ties me to this cafeteria. Perhaps some day I will gain the ability to buy locally or even grow locally. I hope so. Every step I take is an effort to lessen my impact on the land and lives I depend on. I am ever thankful for just how much effort and suffering goes into the cause of keeping me alive. I try my best to be aware of these connections. I try to be fair. I try to be a star thrower.

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