Those Cows Were Really Looking at Me!

            All my yoga teachers have stressed the importance of giving up meat if you were serious about achieving corporeal and mental balance. Having already had eliminated a lot of things from my diet since my celiac disease diagnosis, I decided to pay little attention to the yogis' recommendation, especially that I was planning a trip to Brazil and a visit to a churrascaria was quite inevitable.
            While in Sao Paulo, I dined at several of those meat meccas indulging shamelessly in the prime cuts that I was being offered. Now, just a quick word about what kind of dining this is: it is pigging out. Before you even get a chance to settle down, plates start filling up the table in a manner so swift, you barely get a chance to reflect on it or protest. If this is what you wanted, then you are certainly in the right place. My experience, however, has proven to me that, no matter how starved you happen to be or how much you love food, at some point you will begin to feel a rising frustration as dishes multiply in front of your eyes, meat incessantly circles around you, and more a more food enters your mouth. Suddenly you will find yourself gasping for air and hissing at the staff to just leave you alone! But, hey, maybe it is the right price to pay for volunteering to blindly patronize the meat business.

            One weekend we decided to go to Brotas, a place known for rafting and other outdoors 
activities. The first day I was talked into going on a 26-mile bicycle tour around the area. Throughout the trail we encountered many different animals. We took pictures of them and went on our way. Right when the sun was about to set, we arrived at the peak of a hill where a big herd of cows began running our way. They were not aggressive, rather contemplative and curious. They ran only until a certain point and then just stopped observing us from the distance with those charcoal eyes. There was so much pain in that look, so much disappointment, but also a trace of hope. Here we were - the encounter between the killer and its prey with each of the parties having the possibility of becoming one or the other. Suddenly the picture from the churrascaria with the cows body partitioned for consumption popped in my head and it became evident that we were the ones with blood on our hands. These majestic animals, in turn, were giving us a moment to reflect, a moment to redeem ourselves.

            We left the scene embarrassed and, finally, it became clear what my yoga instructors were trying to convey all this time. How I wished I would have listened then.