I’ll tell you a funny story…
 
Long before fast food restaurants like McDonalds offered salads and stuff, it was pretty impossible to get anything vegetarian when you were on the road and got hungry. This, especially if you didn’t grab some stuff at the grocery store or something like that. The thing was, way back in the way back when, I would go on these weeks long road journeys to places across North America, so on the road meant on the road. It was hard to eat healthy.
 
One of the things I used to do, when I got hungry, was that I would drive up to the drive through window at McDonalds and I would order a Big Mac, hold the meat. You can imagine the responses I would get. The truth being told, some people totally got it. They simply process the order. Others, well… Some had to talk to their managers, or send their managers to talk to me, and stuff like that.
 
I was a very strict vegetarian for about seven years of my life; from the time I was about fourteen or so. Though when you’re young, it’s a bit harder because other people, i.e. your parents, are buying the food you have to choose from.
 
A lot of my friends would rib me about it. But, as most of the people I associated with were deeply involved on the spiritual path, at least on that side of the picture, we were all one big family walking the road of life together.
 
Near the end of the time I was in grad school, I left vegetarianism behind, at least in part. I was just not well. My immune system was not up to par, and I was getting sick all the time. Obviously, due to my diet.
 
I always envy, (for lack of a better term), those people who are up there on food chain and can afford personal chefs. I mean, for them, their diet can be well monitored and maintained. They can stay the course as they will get all of the nutrients provided for them that they need. Just me, out there on my own, however, that was a bit of a different story.
 
When I reemerged into a sometimes meat-eater, I tried to keep it as minimal as possible. That became a bit harder when I married a woman of Korean descent, as that culture eats meat all the time.  But, I have held to my guns and especially in these later years sometimes there will be six months or a year when I have not eaten any red meat at all. I’m kind of Macrobiotic, kind of Mediterranean diet. …Something like that.
 
You know, we all want to stay healthy. Some of us actually care about things like the life of animals, the environment, ecology, and stuff like that. We do all we can, as little as that may be.
 
All this being said, next time you pull up to McDonalds, order a Big Mac, “Hold the meat.” It’s actually pretty good. Tell ‘em, Scott Shaw sent you.