Wrap up.

                Understanding what it means to live by a certain set principle, especially one that is uncommon, means that your thoughts must not waiver from your commitment. If you lose focus your commitment will simply drop. Sometimes you can fall very far from where you want to be, and it can be very tempting to want to drop everything and simply forget. However holding on the commitment to remember your principles, and remember why they are important is critical to any ideological success. understanding why you established your ideals in the first place, is incredibly important to who you become even if your plans are not perfect. I began to understand this more in depth during the final days of the experiment.

                My father called me on Thursday asking me about how everything at school was going. I told him everything was fine, but I made no mention of the experiment. My family understands that I have a tendency to do things a bit off the beaten track, but I felt that it would be better to tell them about my experience with the experiment after it was over. They worry a lot and I know it's only because they care deeply, but I knew the mention of vegan in any context would certainly bring up the eleventh or twelfth ( I can't remember which) telling of the tale of my grandmothers anemia after a short go of being a vegetarian. My grandmother is perfectly fine, but I can understand why they might worry.

                My father told me that he had bought me bus tickets to come back to New York for Passover and that the family had chosen to have its Seder on the second night just to accommodate me so I would not have to miss Friday classes. I thought at first that that was one of the nicest things they could do and was very happy not only to be going home for the holiday but to be with the family. Then I remembered the experiment and realized it was definitely in some trouble.

                The bus ride from D.C. to New York is supposed to take four to five hours and modern diesel buses usually contain a double 24 volt electric battery which is four times larger and energy costly than a regular car not to mention the energy that went into extracting the crude , and filtering it into diesel. In addition I would need to take the bus twice. Two four hour trips crammed in a bus may not sound like luxury but to an energy poor fellow like myself it is way outside my means. This would cost me as much as a week of electrical salary , but how could I say no it would be impossible they had changed everything for me. I decided to go not knowing how I was going to fix this issue.

                I arrived on Friday night and after some hugs and talk of college life I went to bed that night thinking of what I could do to fix how much energy I spent. I had the Idea to buy a fifty dollar pollution allowance to make up for some of the impact my bus ride. I figured that the price would simply be a tax for breaking my promises to the experiment. So it turns out that two twenty dollar bus tickets are going to cost me around ninety dollars. The next day we took a twenty minute drive to my Uncles house for a Passover Seder.  Seder is the Hebrew word for order because everything about the dinner has a particular order in which we do it. I began to think about the importance of order in terms of the experiment and why it is so critical.

                If you are going to maintain any kind of new order it must be your first priority. Your plans can be quickly disrupted by lack of order so you need to have this focus and presence of mind to effect real change in your life. Living purposefully can only be achieved by a mental order of sorts that prioritize commitment first and achieving set goals immediately after. Only then can really be able in any capacity to change yourself and your world. That is one important lesson I gained from this experiment. As for the Passover dinner itself which would cost me three hours of sun I ate it because if a Jewish mother slaves over a hot stove for any amount of time unless you have a death by guilt wish your going to eat it.