[Note: a few other mean-spirited (and seemingly crazy) messages have been omitted, to leap to the relatively "happy ending" to the correspondence, below.]
[Vanima:]
I apologize I knew the question was absurd and yes, I did in fact discredit your work, I'm just curious and living a life of distractions and am confused, that email was insulting I admit and it's a shame... As I mentioned earlier my mind's jumpy and for the wrong reasons. I apologize and from now on I'd rather actually listen, I talk more than I know and that was stupid, I tried to get to an end cause I had a certain belief, I didn't find any source, one guy on the internet (my bad curiosity again) said you might not be vegan and I wasn't confident enough with his points but I just knew Vegan Cheetah wasn't vegan and it was suspicious (I'm sorry again), I thought you might be as well but I was attacking you personally and was angry with your response, I admit defeat.. Forgive me if you can, I'll just switch channels or listen from here on. I don't actually listen, my anger got the better of me. I apologize and won't write to you again.
—————
Thank you for your apology.
Apology accepted.
I was young once.
I know what it's like to be wrong.
I know what it's like to be stupid.
And I know what it takes to grow.
I know what it takes to change.
I know it isn't easy.
It wasn't easy for me.
I wasn't always wise. I wasn't always brilliant.
And sometimes the hardest thing is just having the detachment to see what's in front of your face —to neither disregard it nor subtract from it nor add to it. To see what the evidence is first, and to have a separate category in your own mind for what your opinion is about it, what your doubts are about it, what your feelings are about it, and what your conclusions are about it.
Yes, I am really vegan.
Yes, I really was a scholar of Buddhism.
Yes, I really have studied Chinese in Kunming (and I'm brutally honest about how little of the language I know: I don't exaggerate my accomplishments in that respect).
Attached is my C.V. / résumé.
None of this was easy for me. It won't be easy for you.
But you will be able to learn from other people's experience: other people's wisdom, other people's folly, other people's mistakes.
I tried to be friends with many foolish people on the internet, including Vegan Cheetah (back when he was vegan). I don't make that effort anymore. Now, I respond in the very confrontational way that I did when you wrote to me. In some ways that's better and in some ways that's worse.
I'm no longer trying to build an open, inclusive, broad-based movement that would include people like Vegan Cheetah —and I don't even try to reach out to (and encourage / include) people like yourself. My approach, now, is overtly elitist.
That is "bad" in some very obvious ways. Inviting people like Vegan Cheetah into your life is bad in other ways, perhaps less obvious.
E.M.
