First, thank you Asheville for another fun event. It’s one of my favorite cities to travel to and the food never disappoints. Have you had New Moon Donuts? If you haven’t, you need to.
I wanted to write this last night, but I fell ill very suddenly. I became super tired, headache, and the chills. My fever spiked to 101.7. Today I went to urgent care only to be told I am healthy and they don’t know why or what could be wrong. Today I feel fine. It’s weird and hopefully was a temporary thing.
Let’s Talk About “Stop Having Kids”
Did the title get your attention? Is it provocative? Yup! Am I telling you to stop having kids or not to have them? Nope! What I do want is to have a conversation.
For the second time, the nonprofit, Stop Having Kids, joined us as a vendor in Asheville. They are approachable. They want to engage you in conversation, but they also have a name that causes people to knee-jerk react almost immediately with hate.
No one is saying your beautiful children should not exist. I just want to make that clear, plus if you desire to have children, please go for it and hopefully raise little vegans who become adult vegans.
Messaging That Makes You Think
I feel their name is similar to many vegan slogans that are created to make people think; that also make people knee-jerk directly to anger.
What’s the difference? Both are trying to make a point and to start a conversation. The goal is to reach people who resonate with the message. If you don’t agree with the message, you can move on or you can start a conversation.
I think my main point has nothing to do with either. It would be great for humans to be able to understand the there are many different viewpoints in the world and we are not going to agree 100% of the time. When we disagree, we need to find a better way of handling it. We can communicate to see if there’s common ground or we can ignore and go on with our lives, knowing that’s not your cup of tea.
Can We Just Talk?
The problem is people jump to hate first. People react and attack. It might be why you opened up this newsletter and were getting ready to hit reply to type yell at me.
Let me make a suggestion, please. Let’s communicate more. Let’s have conversations about things we don’t agree on and see if we can find common ground, enough where we can get along or we can agree to disagree. Let’s be respectful of one another.
I’m more than aware that I am being a bit naive and idealistic. I still get to share what kind of world I want to live in and I hope you’ll want to live in that world too.
What do you think?
