Luiz and the octopus: a story of empathy and compassion

Luiz Antonio is a just a small kid, but his moral and understanding have got nothing to do with 'small'. If you were looking for the easier and more down-to-earth explanation of 'why it's good to be a vegetarian', he has the answer :)



I'm personally amazed of the way he clearly and quickly makes the connection between what's on his plate and how it did get there, and if eventually it did get there with pain and suffering.
The empathy this little boy is already showing at such a young age is something mind blowing, not only that - it's something most adults are lacking.

I don't know exactly when the concept of 'selfishness' develops in humans, but most grown ups - even when staring the truth in the eyes - can come out with many many excuses when their 'comfort zone' is threaten. And with this i mean our habits.

There are many habits, some are more harmful than others. Maybe not to us but to other creatures, and that's when the concept of selfishness gets in the way. Most non-vegetarian people have big difficulty in stopping to eat meat and/or fish cause they cannot think of living without the taste of a steak, bacon, turkey etc etc. I used to eat meat (on and off) too, as at that time i still didn't realize the cruelty that lies behind that appealing plate of ... 'whatever was alive before and not anymore'.
But the day came when i found myself watching for the first time a clip on YouTube, where miss Pamela Anderson was explaining what goes behind the scenes at KFC.
At the end of that few minutes clip it was clear to me that i didn't wanna be part of that cruelty cycle no more, and that same day i stopped eating meat for good. That same day i also decided that i had to do something about what i saw, i couldn't just be there, crying my eyes out and do nothing, cause that wouldn't have helped any animals anyway. And that's when my 'Animal Voice' project started.

I wish more people were like sweet Luiz - learning something new, understanding it and acting upon what they just discovered. Breaking old habits that we keep on feeding just out of plain selfishness, cause all meat/fish we'll ever eat started with the killing (you can even call it murdering) of some innocent creature that had a desire to live as much as we all do.

Furthermore, it has been confirmed already that a vegetarian diet is a very healthy choice for humans, especially when thinking the way animals are pumped up with chemicals to fatten them up, and fish is getting no more a good alternative either, considering seas and oceans pollution, radioactivity etc.
Nowadays the alternatives to meat are so many, and so good, in fact there are even experiments being made, where meat alternatives have been served to people expecting to eat meat and not knowing that actually they weren't, and the results are very positive and surprising.
A vegetarian and or/vegan diet is just so good in many ways, for your health, for a cruelty-free lifestyle and for your taste buds...