Love Life!

Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City

It is no doubt that to play good chess requires a healthy mind and body.  A healthy body has to complement a critical mind.  A lot of great grandmasters have realized this fact. Yet, in today’s world, it is very difficult to be healthy. With all the stress, meat-heavy and artificially produced food in the market, getting fit and healthy is almost impossible.

Despite a very hectic schedule, I try to keep moving. I bike or run in the morning or walk the dog. But, one thing I realized is the difficulty of finding restaurants that serve “real healthy food”. Fast foods that serve either burger or fries or soda abound in almost every corner. However, finding something “organic”, and “natural” is quite difficult.

In my quest for a healthier alternative, I stumbled upon a video showing how our meat is actually produced. This very graphic video opened my eyes to the very sad reality of the plight of animals killed for food. 

39 Malingap Street, Teacher's Village, Quezon City

I know it is never too late to change for the better. For the sake of life, I intend not to eat meat or any of its by-products. We all have one life and everyone including animals deserves to enjoy it! I have several Chihuahuas and I can see how they wanted to enjoy their lives and how they feel joy and pain like we do. Other animals are of course no exception. Since I was young, I already had pets. I recall a hen named “Pawing” and a dog named “Rex”.  I remember the happiness they brought to my life. During those days, I was really excited to get home from school and my pet dog would always come running to greet me. My hen was comical and a great mother to her chicks.

Am I turning “vegetarian”, “vegan” or whatever they call it? I do not know. At this point, I do not want to brand what came into me. I just realized that eating animals is something that we do not need to survive. In chess and in life, I try to make the right move. I think it is definitely the right time for me to try cuisines without the carcass of a dead animal as an ingredient. Instead of the familiar fast food, I visited "Earth Kitchen" and "Pino Restaurant". I am in the process of discovering other similar restaurants.

Regrettably, in this time of massive consumption factory farming has become a norm. I have seen how cruel and deplorable this kind of farming does to pigs, cows, and chickens that we customarily eat. It is difficult to deny that this process of producing food where animals are reduced to “lifeless assembly parts” is definitely inhumane and unhealthy. The drugs, suffering and the stress these animals took and endured in those factory farms will most likely be transferred to anyone who eats them.

I do not want to support such cruel and unhealthy methods. I love life and similarly, animals love theirs. If we take an animal’s life for food or whatever, no amount of money, technology or effort can bring it back. I had been thinking lately and I really need to do what is right. We really do not need to kill these animals – our fellow “Earthlings” – to survive.  Indeed, they have much right to live just like the rest of us.