fatigue

I have been thinking about fatigue a lot lately. Perhaps because despite my best intentions, when I get home from work I don’t seem to have “it” in me to do a post. To process pictures.

The winter is perhaps taking a toll. But it is more than that. It is reading people talk about “sustainability” who have no real interest in anything other than justifying the next cow they kill. Who claim that cows don’t have much more intelligence than the food (i.e., grass) they eat.

I find that offensive, and unbelievably ignorant.

I especially find offensive the thread that runs through so much of the world around me – that change is needed, but that people hope someone else does it.

And so, fatigue. I’m in need of a little vegan island where I can recharge and gird myself for the next round of “I don’t want to hear/believe it.”

Yet, my fatigue is something I’ll get over.

Jake, on the other hand, is making faces at me as he eats his medicine-laden bananas.

He’s a dairy cow, which is likely obvious given his clear Holstein heritage. And as a result of the genetic mutilation in the never-ending quest to turn Bessie into the perfect milk-producing machine, Jake has severe arthritis. He is, I believe, 7 years old, what should be a youngster when it comes to cows. He is a victim of his genetics.

And so I fed him his bananas with their medicine. Without it, he would have stayed in that one spot all day. With it, he was up and moving about not long after.

Though rescued from a fate that would have had him killed within his first month of life, he will never be free of the dairy industry. His life will be shortened by their actions, though he has been lucky enough to live at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary most of his life.

I could easily mourn for Jake’s shortened life, but to do that I would have to ignore that he is living his life fully right now. He has the freedom of 400 acres, and the security of living at a sanctuary. He has people who care about him and make sure he is as comfortable as he can be, and who will make however many years he has the best they can be for him. People who believe that he has an inalienable right to all of his years.

He has a lot, really.