I sonder, and I remember.

By Jacob Mills

I lift the lid to stir the pot and I see it. I take a mouthful and I see it, again. Six-months later I take some more out of the freezer and I still see it. I won’t forget its death. I remember them all. The memories flash horrific, yet steadily ground me.

I remember the clean kills, and when it isn’t – my skin flushed and prickling, moving quickly with burning anguish and shame. The emotions are raw and all-at-once. In an instant there is great joy to have provided, deep sadness to have killed, and gratitude to my prey.

I’m charged on primal instinct, but the killing drains me and the day’s air often lingers, sombre. The tracking is ancient and rejuvenating, but the kill is traumatic and imprinting. How could I be okay with outsourcing that?

We don’t all need animal protein. We certainly don’t need as much as we consume. But we’re all a bit different, emotionally and physiologically. We can’t reduce an individual to an average, some of us need it more than others. I need it.

As much as I need to eat meat, I need to know its life and death. It’s a privilege to know the death of my prey, most of us don’t get these opportunities. But maybe we should all try to know it, at least once, before we choose to eat it. How did it live? And how did it die?

In the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, to sonder is to realise that others are living a life as ‘vivid and complex’ as our own. To them, ‘we are an extra sipping coffee in the background, or a blur of traffic passing on the highway, or a lighted window at dusk’. It helps to dissolve the ego, to humble our worries and needs. But what if we sonder other creatures? What would we be to them?

We need to sonder our prey, to know that its life and death are as important as our own. We need to remember them. Then maybe we can all take another step towards remembering our place within the web of life. To eat respectfully, nourished by good, healthy lives and painless deaths.

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