Lessons In Self Acceptance From A Cow

I’ve been told many times over the past few years as I’ve learned more about psychology, meditation, and self-improvement about the importance of “accepting yourself. And honestly, I thought that I did accept myself. Sure, there’s things I wish I could change, but I’m generally happy with how I live my life. I have friends who have never liked the way they look or the way they spend their time. But I’m comfortable with my body, I love my job, and I enjoy the way I spend my time. But last summer, as I was harvesting tomatoes, I had an interesting conversation that made me realize how important self-acceptance is.

I asked my coworkers, “If you could be any vegetable, what would you want to be?” As vegetable farmers, we talk about vegetables a lot. But everyone had an answer: someone would be chard because of the fun colors, someone would be zucchini because they love it’s flavor, and I would be garlic because I love everything about it (see this article). One of my coworkers, Ryan  said, “I would want to be the worm on the tomato.”

Which of course led me to say, “Well, if we’re talking animals, I would want to be a cow. Imagine how nice that life would be, eating grass in beautiful fields all day. And I’d get to be a cow. What could be cooler?” To me, this was so simple. I love cows, they look beautiful, and they seem to live incredible lives.

Cows living their best lives

After everyone answered, I kept thinking about this idea. Then I realized, what if all this cow wanted in its life was to be the worm on the tomato also? What if it dreamed of drinking fresh tomato juice all day instead of constantly chewing grass? What if it wished it were small and invisible instead of so big and visible? That would be a really unhappy cow. And it would be so sad-how could a cow spend its whole life wishing it was something else, when it was so lucky to be a cow?

Then I thought about this and realized- maybe both animals would rather be human? There’s so many incredible things humans can do-we can talk, eat so many different foods, cook, travel farther than these animals could imagine, learn incredible things. I realized that I didn’t want to spend my life as the unhappy cow-I didn’t want to be the one always wishing I was somebody else, I wanted to realize how awesome it is to be me, and how many other people (or animals) might dream of my life.

This isn’t to say that I became an arrogant, overconfident person. Instead, I realized that I didn’t have to worry about what I couldn’t do in my life, who I couldn’t be. I could just focus on who I am, and work towards who I want to be next. I could choose to spend my time the way I want to, and appreciate the life I’m living.

 

“And so for this lifetime you do what you need to do for this lifetime and it doesn’t matter about all the rest because you’ve probably already done it before or else you’ll do it in the future.”- Vicki Mackenzie in A Cave In the Snow