This Means Something

I have a perfect Sunday morning. I’m a few weeks into consistency, and I’m well on my way to habitizing it (I just made up that word. Spread the wealth.).

I wake up early and meet with my friends for breakfast and updates on our week/life/goals/struggles. I head off to church with my peoples, less than 5 minutes away. Straight away after church I drive to the gym–right down the street–for a blessedly, blessedly long, leisurely workout with no time box. Then after a shower and a change, I drive right up the street to my favorite health food store, Harmony Farms. It’s a deliciously quaint place. Locally owned and operated, on top of selling a ton of vitamins and supplements, it also sells a fine array of hippie groceries, including organic, local produce. It’s that type of store that punches you in the face with that strong, healthy herb smell when you walk in. It’s a check your expiration dates, not many people shop here type of store.

It might have been those extra sit-ups I did, but today I was in a particuarly chipper mood when I went to HF. Rather than go straight for my usual of an after workout banana and 5 high-protein faux jerky snacks for the week, I did a little perusing. I picked up a grapefruit for some fresh-squeezed juice for Tuesday morning (which is my Monday morning), a bag of vegan granola with chocolate and peanut butter, an expensive vegan burrito with roasted veggies and white tuscan beans for dinner tonight, an allergen-free, vegan chocolate bar with rice crisps (!), an on sale mango smoothie, and my usual 5 faux jerky snacks. Looking through the isles, I felt again that feeling that I haven’t had for awhile, that I haven’t pursued.

It was almost a year ago that I decided to do this whole vegan thing for real. I remember going to the health food store, starving hungry, buying a mango smoothie and a bag full of veggies, and driving home with an inflated chest, full of resolution. This feeling of walking down the rows of a health food store and seeing tasty thing after tasty thing that proudly boast “vegan” on the package, or finding product after product of things I haven’t tried that I can eat is one of my favorite feelings, odd as that may be. It fills my chest with resolution, reminds me of what this all means. This is something I think is important, and look, these people think it’s important too, and they are making products for all of us so we can all help each other do what we think is important. It’s that feeling of solidarity. I am not alone, there is a goal, a purpose, a reason, and other people feel this too, and this is what they have built and done and accomplished to prove it. Here is this health food store, here is this organic vegan burrito, here is this organically grown grapefruit. And it’s not necessarily a big thing, or the most important decision one can make, but it’s something, it means something. Eat like you believe it.

So I feel this whatever it is: resolution, solidarity, in my chest now and think about how often I used to go out of my way to get it and how I’ve fallen out of that. The joy I get from finding delicious vegan foods is essential to the health of my veganism, something I can’t lose.

Then I drive home with the window down, going out of my way to take the scienic wooded road home, driving in silence, writing a blog post in my head.