Learning to fly

So pretty is this landscape, the lakes and mountains, the colorful and irregularly colored leaves of the maple, linden and oak trees. But everywhere you see caged animals, cows, chickens, sheep, goats and horses. They spend their entire lives innocently imprisoned. Even if some have a large fenced run. Or even spend the summer on alpine pastures. Many cows have the beautiful and cynical view of freedom and meadows and fields from the barn.

Some cows that are lucky are allowed to run around in a meadow and even have their calves with them. Others do not experience this, they are betrayed by their previous providers at the booked slaughter date and finally become what they were destined to be in the first place: They are called "grazing cattle".

Okapi: - I have seen today the unspeakable. That which I never want to see, although I know that it is supposedly "normal". And happens all the time.

Zebra asks: - Do you mean the trailer with heavy bars?

Okapi nods and whispers softly: And it was the cuddly young cows inside. They looked out and didn't understand what was happening.

Zebra hums a tune and then sings:

On a waggon bound for market there's a calf with a mournful eye

high above him there's a swallow winging swiftly through the sky

(....) Stop complaining! said the farmer. Who told you a calf to be?

Why don't you have wings to fly with, like the swallow so proud and free?

Classic case of blaming the victim: it's the victim's own fault, says Okapi with a furrowed brow. An old-school argumentation. Fits colonialism and sexism too. I heard such a stupid program the other day about a super famous international cooking star. It angered me so much that I turned off, snorts Okapi, still noticeably annoyed.

- What was the particular annoyance? Zebra wants to know.

- What kind of culture are you referring to when successful food preparation always requires the violent death of living creatures? Does the agreement to cover up cruelty and injustice, or even to accept it as a normal part of everyday life, constitute an understanding of shared culture?

- I think there's such a long-held idea that it takes a sacrifice to get pleasure.

The perspective brightens with the knowledge that you can change it every day! A happiness! You don't have to eat a goose for Martini, a turkey for Thanksgiving, or a duck for Christmas.

By making choices, you contribute - consciously or unconsciously - to shaping the world every day.

As James Baldwin’s famously wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it’s faced.”