When you see young lambs on green fields, do you think of ...?

It was a relatively warm 54 degrees when I was driving back home.  A little bit of cloud cover that every once in a while sent raindrops down.  The fields looked wonderfully green.  Felt a little bit consoled on a day that didn't seem all that well.

Over at another field, sheep were grazing.  Little lambs too.  The scene was wonderfully therapeutic. If it were not for the lack of a shoulder space on these back roads, I would have parked there to take all these in.

I remembered one interaction, from a few years ago, with the physical therapist who was helping me with calcification in my shoulder.  Not being comfortable with another person, especially a woman, hovering next to me made me do the small talk even more.

"I saw lambs on my here from work" I told her.  "Looked like not many days old."

Her face lit up visualizing the newborn lambs on the green fields.

The nerd in me took over.  "I suppose that is why there is lamb at Easter, eh?"

It seemed like I had knocked the lights out of her.  One minute, her mind had created a relaxing scene of lambs playfully running around in the green fields and, the next minute, thanks to my remark, a lamb was now a dish on the table.

It was mostly a quiet therapy session after that.  Sometimes, small talk goes awry, especially in not-so-comfortable contexts.

But, that small talk is merely yet another example of the cognitive dissonance that permeates our lives.

Once, when visiting with a colleague at her home, she showed me her chicken and pointed to the lone rooster in the group.  She threw some bird feed at them.  I asked her what their typical life expectancy is and whether at some point they will become dinner.  She said she never kills her own chicken, though she does eat chicken.  "I guess I am hypocritical here that I cannot think of my chicken as food."

Here in the US, we are so easily separated from the messy process of a living animal being converted to the food that we purchase.  An overwhelming majority of the consumers are city slickers who are spared of the details.  A packet of boneless chicken is a product in the grocery store as much broccoli or toilet paper are!

It is perhaps such a separation from the source that also makes possible the enormous consumption of chicken or fish or whatever?  How many of the crab and lobster loving consumers, for instance, would bear to witness those critters being boiled alive?  I imagine many would simply prefer not knowing anything about the process.

A few summers ago I was in India when, after a couple of unbearably hot days, I needed to get away from the city.  My father suggested Yelagiri, which is where the entire family went.

Yelagiri, 2009

While walking around in the morning, I noticed two goats tied to a lamp-post.  A few minutes later, when returning to the hotel, we passed that place.  There was only one goat, and it was bleating away.  The other one was hanging dead with its innards exposed.

No cognitive dissonance there for mutton-eaters.

For that matter, no cognitive dissonance on practically anything in India, given the in-your-face manner in which life and death unfold there.