Category: Entry 4 (Page 1 of 2)

This is the week I struggled the most with. I’d say that for better or for worse, I am a very opinionated person. I’d also say that for better or worse, I am a very passionate person. I can be argumentative and angrily dismissive of things when I disagree with them or involve viewpoints that I have a tendency to look down upon. Something I never want to do is virtue signal, but when I’m trying to express advocacy for social justice issues, it gets a little harder. It’s hard for me to advocate for these things without using my extreme frustration with the other side’s racism, sexism, and discriminatory/borderline sadistic policy choices. Even writing this, I get emotional and heated and want to use my negativity as my fuel. This is what made writing this week so difficult.

When it came down to it, I kind of realized that expressing advocacy for causes against injustice simply cannot be separated from directly opposing the source of the injustice. In retrospect, this should’ve been blatantly obvious, but I guess with writing this as a poetry project for a class that’s meant to be bipartisan shouldn’t be too politically charged, but I’m glad I’ve learned to more honestly and accurately represent my views and alliance with the marginalized.

For my fourth round of meditative/analytical art, I felt inspired to completely switch up the medium and artistic style of my work. Previously I have stuck with creating a series of gel pen sketches that are all connected by similar themes, then compiling them into a collage. However, I wanted to challenge myself this time to create one piece/a singular image that encompasses all of my ideas. I decided to switch to watercolor, which is a particularly challenging medium but whose flow I thought would be very conducive to the meditative aspect of this project. Comparing the two, I found that the sketch collages allowed me to easily follow and convey a flow of consciousness because sketching comes easily to me. However, this watercolor made me spend much more time analyzing exactly how to convey my thoughts into a single image. For this watercolor I found myself still focusing on Jean Zaru’s Occupied With Nonviolence. I spent a lot of time focusing on the anatomy and shading of the lips on this piece, as Zaru seems to speak her personal truth very directly, and the authority she has over her own speech is her main source of power. In many of my previous collages, flowers showed up as a common theme to symbolize unity and life amidst chaos and violence. In this, the flowers on Zaru’s face were meant to show how the struggles she has faced in her life may have left scars, but it is from this that she draws beauty and empowerment. Her empathy and understanding of the human condition as informed by her religion are very beautiful qualities to me, and I see these qualities in the flowers that adorn her. However, I did not want to downplay the trauma that her involvement in this conflict has caused her, so I painted bloodshot and teary eyes. This was by far the most enjoyable artistic practice for me, so I plan on using watercolors again in my next round.

While meditating about positive thoughts, I came to the conclusion that nonviolence in practice is a mindset that one has to have. Meditating has helped me form the mindset to stick to the ultimate goal of the project. To impact those one the team to provoke them to want to win games and dominate. Unfortunate for football players, but fortunate for this project it  had to be in a positive way. It has been difficult adapting to the nonviolent side of the practice, with football being the vessel, due to the violent nature of the sport, but with nonviolent communication skills learns through the process of embodying nonviolence I am perfecting the techniques everyday.

After a week of routine meditation, through nonviolent practices noticed that I have grown farther away from meats, naturally. Consuming less meat was not a problem for me because for the first 6years of my life, I was a vegan. My family and I slowly began to transition from vegan to vegetarian, and soon after unfortunately, with our busy schedules could not afford to keep up with the diet. By logging back into to that during this personal project I have noticed that my diet has become a lot healthier. I began to eat more leafy things, spinach and greens and for a snack I would find my self eating an orange or apple. I am a lot more awake throughout the day. I think that anyone can benefit from doing this once in their life because it is a learning experience. You learn how to handle situations differently due to the information you know about nonviolent techniques. Knowledge is power! With the projects coming to an end, I plan on continuing these practices going forward with the seasons here at Lafayette College. I am not trying to leave here with a couple of wins. I did not come here for that, and it needs to change. Nonviolently.

For the past two weeks I have been trying out a new form of mediation called Metta meditation. Metta meditation is a type of meditation that focuses on compassion and love. Metta is a Pali word meaning kindness, good will, and benevolence. This kind of meditation comes from traditions in the Buddhist religion, specifically the Tibetan and Theravada lineages.  To do this, one sits down cross legged on the floor with closed eyes, making sure that the spine remains upright. To begin one generates feelings of kindness and benevolence towards yourself, and then to others. A popular progression is co concentrate on feeling kindness and compassion towards yourself, a good friend, a neutral person on your life, a difficult person in your life, all four of these people equally, and then gradually send these thoughts to the universe. This progression makes sending these feelings to people you may dislike easier by starting with yourself and loved ones. In conclusion to this meditation, you should have developed a feeling of wishing happiness to everyone in the world. Another easy trick to send these good thoughts is to visualize the suffering of others and send them love, or imagining someone and wish them happiness.

To be honest, I was a little skeptical of this type of meditation, it sounds a little cheesy to me. Nonetheless, in the spirit of Thanksgiving and the holiday season I decided to give it a shot and try Metta meditation once a day for about 15 minutes. To my surprise, I felt really good after completing the meditation each day. Wishing happiness to others, especially people I do not know personally, is something I do not do very often.  But when I started to routinely remind myself of my love for myself, family, friends, and people in the world, I found I had a more accepting attitude about my self image, and that I was getting angry less. Especially during the holidays when my huge extended family stays with my immediate family and I in our small house, tensions start to arise because we are all sharing a small space. However, I found myself getting angry or annoyed less during these tensions, because I was able to have more compassion due to my Metta meditation.

I believe Metta meditation can contribute to the greater scope of nonviolent practices because the core of this meditation is unconditional forgiveness, love, and kindness towards all kinds of people. The thought process of self love and love of others helps to humanize the enemy, and increase your compassion towards others. Additionally, the core concepts of nonviolence is to recognize the human in all people and to use kindness during disagreements or violence. Metta meditation could help many people develop compassion for themselves, friends, and family in their everyday lives which can improve relationships, as well as develop compassion for people in the media who may anger them which leads to a happier lifestyle.

In my last post, I talked about the reasons for why there is such a lack of vegetarians in the US. I went over various reasons, the last of which being due to health reasons, in other words, those who had tried vegetarian diets realized they had felt healthier prior to when they quit meat. I concluded the post by discussing the importance of iron (which happens to be found primarily in meat), and the fact that you can in fact achieve iron sufficiency without meat, it just takes a little extra effort.

On my last post, I received a comment asking me about alternative ways in which one can maintain sufficient iron levels without meat, as well as if there are currently resources available in helping new vegetarians adapt to the lifestyle. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

Though the most iron dense foods around are meat (primarily beef), there are other non-meat foods that contain the component, just in lower levels per serving.

Some of these foods include lentils, beans, spinach, tofu, seeds, (such as pumpkin, sesame, and squash), dried apricots, chickpeas, and baked potatoes. Though all of these foods contain lower mgs of iron per serving compared to meat products, they can still very much get the job done when eaten regularly.

If you’re someone who for some reason can’t rely on the above foods to maintain their iron levels, then a great alternative is daily supplements.

As I mentioned before, I am very anemic, and though I do eat many of the foods listed above, my body doesn’t absorb iron as well as other people’s. Because of this, I take daily iron supplements, which are over the counter, and give you a healthy daily dose of iron. These are perfect for people who are vegetarian, or whose bodies simply don’t absorb iron as well.

If you’re a carnivore, however, you should talk to your doctor before taking these supplements. This is because unlike some vitamins/minerals, iron can be quiet dangerous when over consumed, so it’s important to make sure that iron supplements make sense when combined with your personal diet and lifestyle.

Now when it comes to resources people can use when acclimating to a vegetarian lifestyle, I’d say the best options around would be a dietician and/or your medical doctor. Since dietician’s are highly knowledgeable about the world of foods and nutrition, I think conversing with one during and/or prior to becoming a vegetarian would be highly beneficial. If you don’t have access to a dietician (which many people don’t), then I’d suggest relying on the internet to inform yourself about helpful tips and tricks to transitioning from a meat eating lifestyle to a vegetarian one. Besides that, obviously keeping in touch with your regular doctor while transitioning is very important as well.

As for my personal experience, I have started to becoming incredibly used to my vegetarian lifestyle. Since beginning my iron therapy a few weeks ago, I have generally felt more energized, alert, and healthy. And though I used to love chicken and fish, I find that I no longer crave them like I used to.

I day to day life, I have began to emphasize the natural world around me more and more, and often find myself advocating for the vegetarian diet casually among my peers. Through speaking openly about my journey, my family have also decided to hop on board, and have decided to try living a more green lifestyle. So far, they’re finding it highly doable, as well as  beneficial to their health and their minds (for moral reasons).

My goal from here on out is to continue to inform as many people as possible about the positive effects vegetarianism has had on me and my health, and continue to spark conversation about the importance of animal rights.

https://www.nomeatathlete.com/relax/

https://www.webmd.com/diet/iron-rich-foods#2

Nearing the end of the semester, I now have a collection of mandalas that I have created over the past few weeks. Though I find the mandala making process a way of relieving stress, lately it has been difficult to find time to work on this craft because I have been very busy. Even though the mandalas that I have been making do not look too intricate, the drawing of the circles and creating the patterns on the mandala involve a lot of patience. However, I have been able to create small and quick sketches. As of now, I do not have as many mandalas as I’d wish to have, but I think I am satisfied with the quality of each mandala that I’ve created.

In one of my mandalas, I incorporated a quote by Adlai E. Stevenson, which reads “Making peace is harder than making war.” The past few weeks our class has been discussing the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and I find that this quote closely relates to this topic. For years, Israel and Palestine have been experiencing an ongoing struggle and have yet to come to a compromise. This quote by Adlai Stevenson illuminates the difficulty of obtaining peace, which causes many people to turn to war because it is the easier option. Many times in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, people went down the path of war simply because it was perceived to be the easier option. While creating this mandala, I thought about how it is important to recognize that although peace is not the easier option, it is the better option.  

As our personal projects come to an end, I wish to find more time to create mandalas and continue to enjoy the calming experience of mandala making.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because it revolves so much around food and togetherness. When people think of Thanksgiving the first thing that comes to mind is probably the turkey, which is like a symbol and a decoration for the holiday. What stands out the most to me, however, is the baked mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, biscuits, greens, and pies. Even before I became a vegetarian I thought these dishes outshined the turkey.
This year, as always, I was really excited to eat some good food and I also wanted my family to limit the number of dishes made with meat. Some people might think that there aren’t many options during this holiday for vegetarians, but I think there are plenty. My family used to be one of these people, however, this year we made a variety of dishes that were all vegetarian except for one.
It took a little bit of convincing, but my mom decided to not cook a turkey, which I was really happy about. Although, no one in my family really liked turkey we usually had it because it was a tradition. We all agreed that we should have an alternative, especially, because the turkey was too big and there was always so much leftover. Then we ended up cooking chicken instead, which is relatively smaller and arguably tastes better. It was so much fun helping my family make vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes and we felt good because they were much healthier than dishes made with meat. It was also nice seeing my family try to minimize animal suffering by avoiding meat consumption as much as they could on the holiday.

Gregory Bove

For my personal project, I have ultimately decided to create a piece of art which demonstrates the message of equality among all humans, especially between different genders in Egypt. I decided to do this because it was the best way that I deemed fit to both connect the track team and to show support for Azza Soliman, a woman’s rights activist in Egypt who is currently in prison for speaking out against the inequalities that reside there today.

After looking to Amnesty.com to find out about Azza Soliman, I was able to collect a number of statements from the Lafayette Track and Field team, as well as the Lafayette Cross Country team, about the importance of equality in our world today. I will take these sentences and create a picture out of them, which will be the gender equality symbol inside an outline of Egypt.

I believe that the effect of this project will be that the team will now have something which we can say that we all contributed to, and it also allowed me to more closely connect the Track team with the Cross Country team because we were able to come up with these statements in small groups of people which included track and cross country members.

I am very excited to move to the next stages of my project. Right now,  I am revising my draft, looking for any possible errors with characterization or symbolism, and just general grammatic mistakes. I have settled on a name for the project. The eventual short film will be called Soul Force, a homage to satyagraha, the Gandhian term that we learned from Nagler and Kurlansky. I believe this is an appropriate title because I believe that the active practice of nonviolence is a spiritual experience; it is not easy to choose love instead of hatred. It is even more difficult to hate the opposition but not the oppressor. In my screenplay, Amani certainly displayed soul force in dealing with her sister’s death.

The central focus of my project originally had two features: successfully completing a screenplay and eventually filming a short film. At first, I sought to accomplish both in the first semester. A while ago, I contemplated the time constraints and realized that since this project is interactive and involves other people, it would be unfair to myself, my art, and the actors/actresses and producers involved to cram the actual short film into the remainder of the semester. I made an executive decision to produce and distribute the short film next semester when I will be taking a film class and can understand the intricacies of film better. I am very satisfied with my screenplay and view the short film as a continuation of the knowledge I learned this semester beyond this class.

Currently, I am making decisions about the actual production of Soul Force: its length, soundtrack, schedules, media, among other things. I am looking forward to cementing these details and moving towards the actual filming of Soul Force.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I have accepted that eating meat will be inevitable for this occasion. Nonetheless, during the past few months I was able to reduce my meat intake substantially. With my goal of boycotting industrial animal husbandry still standing, I found an even stronger motivation in trying to embrace a healthier lifestyle.

For me it is hard to continuously compromise for the sake of an issue I have only experienced through my computer screen. But when I know that I am also doing this for myself, remaining a vegetarian becomes much more compelling. So, although it is important to be aware of the maltreatment of these animals, I find that the argument for attaining a higher quality of life is more persuasive.

As humans our bodies are built better for a plant-based diet (for more go the PETA website linked below). This means that we are more efficient in digesting high fiber and nutrient dense food, the two main characteristics of a plant-based diet. My experience confirms this evidence, since I became a vegetarian I feel more energetic throughout the day and don’t experience a “food comma” after each meal, which has led to better concentration overall.

I have now realized that while I was trying to reduce violence towards animals the result that more directly impacted me was a decrease in self-violence (our bodies aren’t made for the diets we give them). It still astonishes me how many of our cultural constructions, just like with war, work against our own well-being. Finally, if you don’t think becoming a vegetarian is worth it to stop an inhumane practice, you should at least consider the health benefits.

Is It Really Natural? The Truth About Humans and Eating Meat