One of the things I’ve learned recently is how to listen to someone who believes differently from the way I think, and evaluate the differences and revere those seemingly very different and hard to believe ideas.

It’s easy to brush someone off as a flake and regard what they believe as just nuts, and then regard them as a nut too. But people think differently and believe differently do so not because they are necessarily nuts, but because what they know to be true is taking them in a different direction. And it’s not a matter of “setting them straight” it’s a matter of listening – because we all need to listen to learn.

One of the things that has come into my life lately is Vegetarianism and even Veganism. Now we are not talking about paganism, Nazism, Atheism or Communism. We are talking about a belief that meat is not a go on the plate. With Veganism we are talking about no byproducts of a mama go on the plate.

When you first think about this, it strikes an emotional chord. You think of all the animals who die to fill our plates. You think of death animal camps and brutal killings. But then you go to the grocery store and packaged meat just looks like packaged meat.

There is information on both sides of the issue:

Is meat good for you or isn’t it? In what amounts can meat be deemed a benefit to the body? Is the perfect food really an egg? Why is it so hard to drink milk after 40; is nature telling us something?

If you don’t eat any meat or meat byproducts, do you have to supplement your diet with chemicals that will keep you alive? If you don’t eat animal byproducts are you constantly searching for substitutes to eat a like diet? What happens if you just nix the like diet and eat only those things that can naturally be made without substitutions or chemicals?

But these are questions about the life of a carnivore, a vegan or vegetarian. They are not questions that bespeak the goodness or the creativeness nor spiritual essence of the person who either eats meat or doesn’t eat animal byproducts. They are about lifestyle only.

Based on what a person eats, would you rather be friends with someone who thinks about what they put into their body, or someone who eats a steady diet of glutenous muck? It’s a personal response. I vote for the thinker; their friendship would be more valuable to me because they would necessarily think about other things as well.

People come at life from different perspectives in life. It seems to me that all these things are interesting and worth time and effort to listen to and to try to understand. Understanding is a gift from God. So it’s a green light to stop, look and listen.

I think more than anything, I’ve learned so much from my new Vegan friends. I’ve learned to think about different perspectives on a lot of foods for my own health and the health of the people I serve. I’ve learned that substituting can be fun and creative and actually make food taste better. And learning about new foods has certainly been an eye opener. But vegetarianism is not too far from my state of mind because twice a week at school, we eat byproducts (eggs and cheese) and no meat.

Learning, it seems, should be a life long process.