I’m on shrooms again! They’re hitting me really hard and making me feel so much. I want to document some of that for myself, and I also want share with the world.
I’m thinking about the other people I’m on a spring break trip with right now. I just genuinely love and care for them all so much. And I want them all to enjoy this trip so deeply. I just don’t always know how to communicate that or to show that. It’s so hard to express how much I care to others because it’s so much. The love I have for you all is so so so so deep. It makes me cry so much, and I’m afraid to show how deep it is. But I want you all to be the happiest ever. And I want to be there for everyone when they need someone.
I’m also thinking about my life commitments. Honestly, I think my biggest commitment in life right now, might be to the animals who suffer in factory farms. That makes me really sad to say and admit. Because the animals’ suffering is so incredibly deep and heavy. And I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold it for. Because it is already starting to weigh on me, and I’ve only truly remained deeply focused on this issue for about the last year. But it’s fucking hard! It’s so hard to carry so much suffering. I push it aside so I can do things that matter. But the things that matter often require difficult emotional conversations, or being unpopular, or bringing attention to a tension that everyone else would rather ignore. And it sometimes feels hard to constantly force myself into the thick of all that. And that’s even with me still holding back a lot of the time. I think I could maintain this pace for maybe ten years or so, but it would eventually break me. I guess that’s a good thing to think about going forward. How can I sustainably remain involved in the animal rights movement?
But yeah, my biggest commitment in life right now does feel like it’s for the animals. And that’s so sad to say because I also have deep commitments to the others in my life. But I feel like, at least for right now, my primary focus is the animals. That feels sort of lonely.
And it also makes me feel like it’s probably easier for me to have deep relationships with other people who are also deeply dedicated to animal liberation. Because our goals and commitments will be so overlapping.
But also I haven’t found that in my life so far. Most of my deep relationships are with people outside the movement I dedicate myself towards. That’s both a tension in my life and a nice breather.
But yeah, I’m just grappling with the depth of the commitment I’ve made to the animals. I want to hold on to it for as long as possible. But I know there might come a point in time where I have to let go for myself.
Also, maybe I shouldn’t view things from such a simple, structured point of view. Maybe I can have fluid commitments to many things. Then again, some things require sustained focus and attention, and it’s hard to give anything your full attention, when your attention is spread too thin.
That’s true on both a macro level and a micro level. For example, sustaining my attention on the animal rights movement, or sustaining my attention on a certain project within the animal rights movement.
Okay, I’m getting too “thinky” now and I want to become more emotional again. It’s so fun being able to flip the switch between debilitating emotion and focused thought and problem solving. The debilitating emotion is more fun to be honest. Also super scary though.
Okay, what should I have debilitating emotions about? I think I’m going to think about the deepest relationships I have in my life. I’m going to fixate on how much I love every fiber of these people.
It’s so beautiful knowing for someone for so many years. To get to watch them shape and grow. To shape and grow alongside them. I never want to lose any of my relationships it makes me so sad. But it’s also just impossible to give your attention to that many people at once. I wish I had infinite attention and I could show everyone how much I loved them all the time. I wish I could give everyone my full attention all the time. I want to make everyone feel so seen and heard and special and loved because you all are. You’re all so fucking beautiful it breaks my heart.
Okay, I’m sobbing again now because it’s so good. It’s so fucking good to love people so much. I want everyone to know how much I love them. I wish it wasn’t so scary to share.
I should tell people more. I want to tell everyone in my life how much they mean to me. How much they’ve shaped me, how often I think of them, how much I feel for them.
I really need to confront that fear more often. I want to live more fully. I feel like I was living that way more so towards the beginning of law school. I was so curious and open. But now I’m more anxious and afraid of what people think of me. I’m also wrapped up thinking about how to activism all the time. That makes me think, I really need to learn how to develop a healthier relationship with my activism. Right now I divert such an anxious attention towards it. That can be helpful because I don’t let things slip through the cracks, but it can also be distracting, both from activism itself and the people in my life. Maybe I should meditate more, or do more to structure my days, or journal more, or get a weekly scheduled therapist, or something else that I’m not thinking of.
Okay, I’m getting too thinky again. I want to go back to feeling now.
Actually a quick thought before I do that. I was thinking how everything in the universe is neutral. Like rocks aren’t emotional. But mountain ranges still bring me so much joy. Which means that I am attributing joy to something that has no joy within it. So it’s not that the rocks are bringing me joy. I’m giving my joy to the rocks. What else can I give my joy to?
Okay, I’m going to give my joy to the bracelet on my hand now. Woooah this is actually so fun. My bracelet is bringing me so much joy right now (well, actually I’m giving my joy to my bracelet). But yeah, I’ve been wearing this bracelet every day for probably like three years now or so. It’s so pretty. And it’s the same type of bracelet everyone in my family wears. And my ancestors. And people of my culture and religion. It feels so good to be connected to something bigger than yourself even with something as simple as a bracelet. We should try to create something like that for the animal rights movement.
It’s funny that communal things are laughed at and called culty when they’re smaller and less established. But when communal things are super old and established (religion), they’re deemed to be more legitimate. Maybe that’s not the only difference, but it feels like the main one to me right now. It’s so cool how belief systems transcend generations and become so deeply entrenched. It’s also kind of scary. We really got to get rid of all the bad ones. It’s tough though because we can’t all agree on which ones are the bad ones.
Hopefully, we can all at least agree on something very general, like suffering is a bad thing. And then we can all tap into the shared identity of being anti-suffering or pro-flourishing. And we can then build our communities and institutions in favor of those pursuits.
I feel like the reason we haven’t been completely able to do that as a species yet is because we don’t trust each other enough. But if trust can be scaled and shared by everyone within a community. Oh my god, just imagine what we’d be capable of if we all trusted one another to have our best interests at heart.
It’s so sad how distrustful we can be of one another. I really want to help build that while I’m here on this earth. I want to build community where we all have each other’s best interests at heart, and we all trust one another. That would be so beautiful. I’m hopeful we can do that as a species. I really am. We’re just a tiny baby species, but I think we can all come together and some point. And then we can really focus on taking care of all the other animals too.
Okay for context, I sort of have this grand vision of abolishing all suffering in the universe. Maybe not all suffering, sometimes we might deem it to be useful or worthwhile, but we’d be able to get rid of the parts we don’t want. Maybe just having the ability to dictate when and when not to suffer would totally change the whole human experience, but I think we could learn to use it beneficially. Or at least agree on an institutional level which kinds of suffering we want to allow people to experience.
But anyway, it would be really cool to eliminate suffering within the human race, and then to eliminate suffering for other lifeforms too. Of course, we can work on both these problems at once (human suffering and nonhuman suffering). But I do think, to some degree, we have to get our own shit together before we’re going to fully address the vastness of nonhuman suffering.
Anyway, yeah that would be super cool. I want everyone to be so happy.
Okay, I’m getting sort of bored now. I’m going to leave this here, and if you read to the end I hope you enjoyed! And I hope you know how much I love you! And that we can trust each other! I really need to do more in life to bring this energy to people. It’s just so scary.
Okay, actually signing off now. I love you all so much. I hope you have the greatest experiences ever. I want you all to have all the love in the world.
Taj 