Since I became vegan, I’ve become so much more sensitive to animals. It feels like my consciousness has risen—or maybe my awareness has just widened—and now I notice things I used to drive right past.
Like roadkill.
I was driving today and saw so much of it. Instead of just seeing an animal on the side of the road, I started wondering:
What was that animal’s life like?
Where was it going?
Why did it cross the road at that exact moment?
Was it scared when it died?
Was there another animal waiting for it somewhere?
Does its family miss it?
Then I started thinking about Charleston and all the construction happening, especially on Johns Island. There are deer wandering through people’s yards, and we act surprised.
Why are they in our yards?
Well… because our yards were their yards.
We keep building homes for humans on land that has been home to animals for generations upon generations.
We clear the trees, bulldoze the brush, tear apart habitats, pave roads through what used to be their pathways—and then wonder why the deer are standing in the front yard.
Where exactly are they supposed to go?
Imagine living your perfectly normal life one week, and then suddenly terrifying machines show up. The trees disappear. Your hiding places disappear. Your food disappears. The paths you have always followed disappear.
Nobody explains anything to you.
You just run.
And now you’re trying to survive in a completely unfamiliar environment filled with cars, pavement, fences, houses, lights, noise and people.
That thought really bothers me.
Because sometimes I think we forget that development doesn’t happen on empty land. Something was already there.
Something lived there.
Something ate there.
Something slept there.
Something raised its babies there.
And when we destroy those habitats, animals have to move. They end up crossing unfamiliar roads, wandering through neighborhoods and searching for food in places they never needed to search before.
Then we call them the nuisance.
That whole energy of more, more, more really disrupts my inner frequency.
More houses. More construction. More traffic. More pavement. More consumption. More people squeezed into places without stopping to ask what—or who—we are displacing in order to make room.
I’m trying to live differently now. I’m trying to stay connected to my intuition, my consciousness and the other beings sharing this planet with us.
And part of that means I can’t just look away anymore.
When I see an animal on the side of the road, I don’t see an inconvenience or something gross that I need to steer around.
I see a life.
A little life that was happening before I got there.
Maybe we can’t stop every accident. Maybe we can’t stop every road from being built or every piece of land from being developed. But we can become more conscious of what our expansion costs.
We can slow down.
We can pay attention.
We can protect habitat.
We can remember that humans are not the only ones trying to make a home here.
So respect your roadkill.
Respect the deer standing in your yard.
Respect the squirrel trying to cross the street.
Respect the animals scrambling to figure out where the hell their home went.
And maybe, before we build one more thing, we should stop for a second and ask:
Who already lives here?
