Is There Such a Thing as "100% Vegan"? Should We Strive to Reach It, At All?

A little over two weeks ago, I have - thus far - successfully returned to Veganism.

I was Vegan from the 26th of May, 2015 until the 27th of december, 2023 = when, depending purely upon whichever items were available for me on the Breakfast at my beLoved "♥️Turist♥️" (as I had no money whatsoever beyond it, for anything), thus having absolutely no available source for Proteins and Vitamin D (at the ♥️Belarusian🇧🇾♥️ Winter...), I actually had no choice, but to go back to consuming dairy (mostly yellow Cheese) and eggs, simply in order to survive... so, in a heart breaking defeat, I had done so. Gott sei dank, I had the Vegetarianism I grew up on to fall back onto, so that I did not stoop down to consuming the flesh of any murdered Animals!!

Ĥowever, falling back onto my childhood Vegetarianism, I had then did find it increasingly difficult to finally make the move back to Veganism again, once that horrible crisis has ended a week later, or when it has become possible for me to cook, once again, almost a year after that, upon moving here to "♥️Antigona♥️" (second Best Place I've lived at during these past 2¼ years, by the way, right after "♥️Turist♥️", which is why it is second only to it at the number of days I have thus far lived here: 145 this coming Saturday, compared to 316, at the One-and-Only "♥️Turist♥️"... which my Heart misses so much it hurts...).

I had clang onto the fact, that both the former u.s.s.r. (at all the parts of it I have thus far been to - admittedly, just a few - well, can't help it, if putin doesn't want me to come again...), and the Balkan (again, referring only to the places I have been to thus far: Makedonija and Albania), are incredibly difficult for Vegans. Ĥowever, it is possible, to be Vegan here!! There are Beans, and Lentils and Peanuts etc., so Proteins can be obtained, even if there is absolutely no Tofu to be had, anywhere, and Ĥùmus and Ṭĥìna ("Hummus and Tahini") are an expensive rarity. And there are Veggies and Ĥalva and Vegan Cheeses (funny, they are called "Posna" = "Fasting" - here... as if my Normal Food, Vegan Food, is "fasting"...) and Ajvar (מטבּוּחה) and, well, lots of other stuff.

It's just that, having gotten used to being "allowed" to freely consume eggs and dairy cheese, to just buy eggs abd fry them for Breakfast, to simply sit in a Café, or a Restaurant, and having a piece of Cake, or a slice of Pizza, without worrying about it being Vegan... I did find it psychologically challenging, to push myself back to Veganism. I am ashamed to say, that even knowing the despicable atrocities involved in making those things, the unthinkable tortures Cows and Chickens are being subjected to, as part of the Animal holocaust - I did still continue, to prioritize what I had mentally grasp as being my emotional wellbeing, over anything else. I am ashamed, however I am, mentally and emotionally and physically and psychologically, utterly exhausted, by 2¼ years of forced nomadic existence - more and more I feel, that, in fact, my entire Psyché is being held together by some proverbial duct-tape, the result of never being allowed to stay in one place, for more than three months at the most - and having absolutely no place, to truly call my own, ever since the 26th of July, 2023.

I am frighteningly close to a complete and total breakdown. My mental faculties are already weakening. I am forgetting - well, enough with that. The suffering of the innocent Animals, is incomprehensibly, shockingly worse.

The thing is: I cannot even be certain, if I will manage to hold on to Veganism permanently, from now on... I simply do not know. Simply do not know.

Ĥowever, moving away from my personal situation to the more general sphere, I must wonder: can there at all be such a thing, as "100% Veganism, Pure and Total"?

I am taking some medications nowadays, to treat some minor, yet highly irritating health problems. When I suffer pains (from my back muscles, for example), I do take something to stop that pain.

In every likelihood, those things were cruelly tested on innocent Animals!

Should I not prefer to righteously suffer?

Would that not be the Moral thing to do?

Or, at a wildly different example: when buying Vegan Šawarma - for example, at Шава Хауз - I can never be absolutely sure, that it was not made touching the meat one. I Hope that, when they say Vegan, it means that the dishes and the tools and the surfaces are all clean of ANY meat etc., and nothing like that is EVER contaminating it - but, I cannot be absolutely sure.

But, does it matter? Should I truly drive myself mad, over such tiny, absolutely irrelevant minutia?

For the sake of my Mental Health, I NEVER ask such Questions anywhere. Since Sometimes, the only thing more dangerous than a Question, is an Answer!

(Rule of Acquisition number 208)

Or leather. Конечно I shall never actually buy anything made with leather. Ĥowever: should I present with a choice, to either use a leather armchair to sit on, or stand - I choose to sit.

I had once rad a post by some chap, a fanatic Vegan (and Radical Leftist, gender-cancelling, all the Great Ideological stuff) from the Land of Knà'an as well, who had once chosen to stand through an entire film, in order not to sit on any of a Cinema's leather armchairs.

My association from that insane story was a story I had heard many, many years before, back in 1990 more or less, about an ultra fanatic extremely orthodox religious jewish rabbi, who had just passed away - and how, once, upon travelling by train, he did not sit (but, rather, stood up for the entire length of that one-hour journey), so as to avoid a situation, when the fabric of his clothes, might touch that of the train-seat, potentially causing a situation of "ša'atnéz" (a forgotten, esoteric and negligible prohibition from the biblical jewish religious law, to ever put together wool and linen).

Such a crackpot-fanaticism, is the most certain route to a raging mental illness.

So, No: I actually do not think, that 100% Veganism is at all attainable in our World, nor that we should, at all, ever strive for it.

Doing one's realistic Best, is absolutely okay.🙂