Suffering Footprint: The reason I re-purposed my life.

It was around the end of 2010, when I started giving some serious thought to committing suicide. I wasn’t feeling depressed. I wasn’t broke. Actually, quite the opposite. I’d achieved everything I’d set out to achieve materially, and more. I’d have been able to continue my comfortable lifestyle, without having to work for it, till the day I died. So, something inside me kept asking me “why wait”?

I was made to talk with my physician, and although he didn’t have an answer for me, he did have these happy pills. The side effects — “depression, suicidal thoughts and unusually grand ideas”. I steered clear of these pills.

A year passed by, and this discomfort I had with my comfortable life, grew into an angst. Every day that I lived, I was just making up an excuse to not kill myself. I was too attached to my life!

You can find solutions to a lot of things, if you think long and hard enough. So that’s what I did, and, I realized what was bothering me was the “suffering footprint” of my consumption.

What is Suffering Footprint?

Every act of consumption, requires production. And, it seems that every act of production caused someone to suffer. Suffer, as in experience unwanted physical pain. Sometimes this suffering is clearly visible, like in the case of meat production, and slightly hidden away for things like dairy and eggs, and a few more steps removed for most other things.

I started looking at how things that I consumed regularly, are produced. The number of organisms — from earthworms to human — that suffer to produce even a bowl of rice, is immense. Farm land comes from clear cutting forests, taking away home from all the birds and other animals that lived there. Then the land is flooded, drowning and killing a lot of small animals that live under the surface. In small farms, a bull is used to pull the plough.

It’s not an easy job to pull the heavy plough through 6 inches of mud. If you’ve ever had your flip-flop stuck in the mud, you can maybe relate a little. Most old bulls die doing this work. Then, there are countless earthworms and insects that get crushed to death in the process. It’s not an easy way to go. And, this is just the production.

Then, there is the harvesting, milling, packaging and the supply chain required to get the rice to me. This involves a huge industrial complex of factories, storage facilities, and transportation. All of this is powered by mining for metals, coal and petroleum at the very minimum. Which in turn has a horrible impact on the environment, and all human and non-human animals in it.

This was a paralyzing thought, especially for someone who considered themselves to be a good person. I completely believed in “do no harm”. And here I was, harming by the virtue of just being an ordinary consumer.

I was already a somewhat conscious consumer. I bought used clothes, books and furniture, and I had turned vegan — not eating meat , eggs or dairy; so the big ticket items were gone.

Still, I’d been using my privilege of being an able-bodied, resourceful human being to live a life where I sought comfort, convenience and pleasure, above everything else, overlooking the impact of my actions on others. For my indulgences, others had to suffer.

I started moving away from unnecessary consumption. Unnecessary being desire driven, instead of being need based. So it’s not like I stopped eating or drinking, but I stopped drinking alcohol. I reduced indulging including traveling without purpose, reduced smoking cigarettes … and other interesting herbs. By reducing my consumption I was reducing my suffering footprint.

But reducing my consumption was just half the battle. I could lower my consumption all I wanted, but there was no way I could eliminate it.

Even for me to live just meeting my basic needs, I had to consume knowing fully well that others had to suffer for that. If for me to live, others had to suffer and even die, then it followed that my life wasn’t just mine, it came after all at a cost to others. This was very hard for me to accept.

I had reduced the impact I caused by my actions, but if I didn’t do something with my life beneficial for others, then even that in-action also had a suffering footprint.

I wanted to reject this but just because I did not like it, wasn’t a reason to ignore the outcome of a logical process.

Up until this point, realistically, the only reason I’d been living was because I was born. I’d no say in that matter, but continuing to live was a choice. If i took myself out of the system, the system of suffering would have still continued as there are billions of other consumers. So a better value proposition was for me to live and work against suffering. Basically, re-purpose my life. For the first time in my life, Instead of living because I was born or too attached to my life, I chose to live. Chose to live deliberately and make my life count.

My life mantra became — consume to live, live to help reduce suffering. Just like comfort, convenience and pleasure served as a yardstick for making life decisions until this point, suffering footprint became the yardstick this point on.

I’d chosen to focus on suffering as everyone tries to avoid suffering — irrespective of caste, culture, color, gender, or even species. The experience of suffering is one of the absolutely real, undeniable, and a rather bad experience for all organisms. From an earthworm to a dog to a goat to a cow to a human being, everyone avoids unwanted physical pain.

If unwanted pain is an absolute bad, then reducing it becomes absolutely good.

So I now I knew these two things. What I should not do — which is to not indulge in over-consumption, and what I should do — which is to start help reducing pain, especially for those who can’t help themselves.

What I didn’t know was how to do it. How do I break my addiction to consumption which was ingrained so well in my brain. Growing up, like most people I was vulnerable. I had my insecurities, a need for acceptance and a desire to be happy. I did what I saw the good looking, confident, happy people on television did. I ate like them. I drank what they drank. I smoked what they smoked. I even tried to look like they did.

“Consuming” is what I’d been told, or rather sold, was the way to live, the path to happiness. The spell had broken, and I realized not only had consumerism failed to deliver on its promise, but it had me cause all this suffering too.

I wasn’t a bad person. My apathy had stemmed from a lack of awareness, ingrained consumption patterns, and a lack of alternative actionables.

Although I was aware now, I needed a way to nudge myself away from consumerism. If I could just replace my destructive indulgences with helpful indulgences, I could almost reverse my negative impact.

Luckily, trying to stop the acts of over-consumption, and the trying to help others, go hand in hand. Almost as if focusing on something bigger than yourself helps you climb out of this bottomless pit that we are trying to fill with over consumption.

I started turning my life around. Reducing one cigarette at a time (probably why it took me so long). Helping one animal at a time. Initially, just the stray dogs I saw in the street. It wasn’t anything grand. Feeding them, and taking them to a vet if I saw one injured. Learning some basic first aid.

I knew, that for every one I was helping, there were millions I wasn’t. But suffering is experienced on an individual level, so each one that I helped mattered.

The joy I get from this was much more fulfilling and lasting, than the fleeting pleasures I got from chasing one new experience after the other.

I had found this new template for living my life, which not only reduced my suffering footprint, but also brought me joy. I know knew what to live for, and how to live. But changing how you live changes the questions you ask.

Now I was asking, How do I share this, and how do I scale this. Back to thinking long and hard, but this time the answer came quickly. One question answered the other. Sharing it is scaling it.

That’s when I started Peepal Farm.

It is a house which has a clinic instead of a master bedroom; it has a cow shed instead of a swimming pool; it has space for people to come and volunteer and get involved and be inspired. It has space to organically farm, while reducing our harm. We rescue injured stray animals, mostly dogs, cats, cows and mules — people eat most other animals, which is why you won’t find stray goats, chicken or buffaloes.

Peepal Farm is a place for animals to heal, and be heard. I wanted people to have a taste of “how doing good, feels great”. We’ve had over 300 volunteers from all over the world, and when they brush a dog and and then they brush a cow, the imaginary boundaries they have between companion animals — not okay to eat — and farm animals — okay to eat … they begin to blur.

Everybody has a different take home — some people, especially from Indian cities, go back and put a doormat out for a homeless dog to have a warm place to sleep on a cold winter night, a bowl of water in summers. Some people quit eating animals. Some reduce their dairy consumption. A few have even quit their corporate jobs and started working with small non-profits.

Then there were some who wanted to start places like Peepal Farm, and almost always the first question was “Do I have to be a millionaire to do this?”. So one of the key aspirations for us was to make the place financially self sustainable. We started a farm-stay. We started making home made food items which not only brought in revenue, but also acted as a way to generate more awareness as each product carries a message about compassion for animals, and a story of a dog waiting for a home.

The influence of all this did not stay contained in the farm, it spilled over in ways we didn’t plan for. Neighborhood kids started hanging out at the farm, practising their English, and even helping with rescues. Couple of young guys who were initially helping build the farm, joined as part of the rescue team and can now even do minor surgeries if need be. The veggie vendors started giving us old veggies for cows. One guy in the village gave us land so we could grow grass for cows. More girls in the village now know how to Google.

Changing my lifestyle and life’s objective was a struggle, but not as hard as I thought it would be. Our brains are used to making decisions based on what we think eventually will make us feel good. For three decades I had associated “feeling good” with seeking comfort, convenience, and pleasure.

It is somewhat hard making decisions based on knowing rationally what is good, instead of what feels good … as you are operating on sheer will power, and it’s a little draining.

For me, it took almost three years to get over the hump, and it was one small decision at a time. Now on most days, doing good is what feels good and it’s not that difficult anymore.

On other days — well, there are simpler pleasures.