When to Say Yes & When to Say No as a Vegan

By Linden Mackey, Guest Contributor

Recently I received a cool invitation from my financial planner, a lovely young woman with whom I would like to interact more frequently and personally. She was putting together a Valentine’s Day event for a few special women in her life, a ‘girls-night-out’ sort of thing, a private cooking class taught by a chef in a marvelous loft in the city.

“If we live what we know, our life will be our rap.” – James Herlihy, Season of the Witch

I love to cook, and I love to eat, and I love taking every opportunity to get into San Francisco.

I also know that the likelihood of this chef instructing a class on vegan cooking is slim to none. Actually, probably, none to none. Despite my interest in this opportunity to forge a closer connection with Jessica, and to potentially strike up some new friendships in the East Bay, where I am still quite the newcomer, I won’t be accepting this invitation.

There is no purpose in learning a new recipe to cook animals I no longer eat, no way could I partake and no way could I remain neutral about it.

Communal preparation and consumption of food are two of the most elemental activities over which humans bond – and it’s difficult to say no to that. But when it involves the consumption of animals, we are also coming together over suffering and death, and bringing violence into our own selves. This is a choice, whether or not most of us consider or acknowledge it: doing harm against ourselves, our fellow creatures, our planet, and whatever spiritual dimensions exist beyond our tangible grasp.

It’s a simple invitation, but one fraught with implication and ramification – not just for me, but for those also who accept it, although unknowingly. I just don’t think that there is a way to go part-way with this – like, I could go and just see if maybe I could partake in perhaps a side salad or vegetable dish… and part of me would like to, just to see where possible relationships could be made.

I suppose I could also go and use the opportunity to explain why I wasn’t partaking fully – but that would seem to violate the bounds and principles of friendship and general good conduct. I can’t see using an invitation to an honest evening of friendship as a platform no matter how strongly I believe in something.

Here’s what I said to Jessica:

“You know I love to cook and I love to eat…but don’t love to eat animals nfor anything that comes from them… so imagining it likely that the course taught wouldn’t be vegan, I will regretfully decline. Although it does sound fantastic and is very generous of you, and I am glad you thought of including me.”

Perhaps my declination will also be an invitation – an invitation to consider another choice, one nothing short of considering life.

Photo credit: Scott Matthewman