We have a Responsability
The first time I heard the word "vegan" was in school, when a teacher told us in class how a student decided to become vegan and ended up with serious health problems because she wasn't eating anything. Since then, this idea stuck in my head, and I grew up thinking that vegans were these pale, malnourished, and extremist people who defy the laws of nature by trying to achieve the impossible.
I'm sure that at some point in our lives, we've all had this image of vegans. We grow up with stereotypes and jokes that make it easy to maintain. "Vegans only eat grass." We've all heard that at some point.
Well, I recently decided to become vegan.
And I did it because, just as I grew up with those stereotypes, I also grew up saying that I loved animals. And I realized that the only way I could continue to affirm this was to become vegan. I realized that the image we have of vegans is just a stereotype, one more among many in society. That student the teacher was talking about is just an example of someone who decided to become vegan irresponsibly and unconsciously, and despite whatever good intentions she may have had, all she managed to do was spread the wrong message: that vegans are sick people, and that consuming animal products is necessary.
Being vegan means taking responsibility. We need to be healthy, not only for ourselves, but to spread the right message: that animal products are not necessary, and that there is unnecessary suffering behind them.
Being vegan involves planning, learning, and changing habits. That's what the student didn't take into account, that this is not comfortable, at first. But it doesn´t matter because, in the end, what we're doing is challenging a system, and that´s not supposed to be comfortable. We are in the middle of a bubble of comfort, and we've decided to give up these comforts because we know it's not fair.