Lena Livin Life: What you don't know

Sometimes we choose to ignore all the darkness in the world because the sunshine is just so damn pretty. Sometimes people think its okay to forget all that’s wrong with the world, so they can live their life to the very fullest. I, however don’t. I understand it, but I don’t believe in it.

I realize this column won’t change the world, but we can try. It’s the little things that bother me the most. It’s the little things that people don’t want to hear me talk about because they don’t want to know. The same things they don’t tell you because they know if you knew, you’d want change. You don’t want to know that McDonald’s meat is made in a that’s so disgusting and inhumanly cruel, it’s destroying the American health and life style.

Obesity is leading America to death. You don’t want to know that some of your favorite products are tested on animals, rubbed in their eyes and forced inside of them, over and over again. The precious animal doesn’t even get to die, just live painfully, so you can have another line of shampoo. You’d rather not know about the 200,000 children in West Africa working under forced labor conditions on cocoa farms to help produce chocolates for you to enjoy. Child slavery is alive and well. You don’t want to know that your favorite Nike shoes are made by workers in Indonesia, China and Vietnam, where the workers are paid 1.75 a day where they have no labor laws to protect their rights. You are paying over a hundred dollars for shoes that the people only get paid a couple bucks to make. The list only goes on. It was only the other day I had woke up late and needed to be at work. There was no gas in my car and the closest gas station to my house was the oh- so-wonderful BP.

I had told myself never to get gas from them again because of the horrible oil spill and their lack of responsibility. They are spending more money now than ever to advertise their company as “good” when clearly they messed up, big time. I was giving in, however, because I just needed to get the gas and go. What’s 20 dollars going to do? Let me just quickly stop there this one time and never go back. I got there, and realized I was making a mistake. Twenty dollars would aid a company that is to blame for a huge disaster.

They’d probably just spend it on another commercial covering up for the spill anyway. I left, and didn’t help support a problem. Every time I sit down to eat at a table full of friends I get the same question. Why are you a vegetarian? I ask if they really want me to go into detail, and when they respond with yes, I begin. I explain in full detail how the animals are killed, and the living conditions they are in before they die.

I explain how unhealthy fast food is. How harmful it is to our body. How truly evil places like Mcdonalds are. I can go on, and on. And I do.

Until they stop me, because suddenly everyone at the table doesn’t want to eat the fast food in front of them. Suddenly they understand the truth, but they don’t want too. “Lena stop! Now I don’t want to eat it.” Well then don’t. Don’t eat it. Don’t spend another dime on fast food companies that could literally care less about the animals they kill, the food they make or the people they feed.

All they care about is that dollar you spend. The money you are so easily giving away. I realize not everyone is a vegetarian, or cares about all the things I find so important. But if everyone just found one thing they could fight for, they could change for. Then we’d really all be coming together for the same thing. A change.

We don’t want to know the inconvenient truth, to alter our so convenient life. But if we don’t know, we can’t change. We can’t help. We all feel emotions the same way, or at least I like to think so. So, some of us decide not to listen because we don’t want to feel. Feel, the very same emotion I feel that gets me to stop eating tasty fast food, or use popular everyday animal tested products.

The very same emotion I use to help strengthen my will when I decide to boycott corrupt companies. It’s the emotion I use, to write this, and all the emotions you will feel while reading. The only thing left is acting upon them. Using them.