Broken Open: Mountains, Demons, Treadmills And a Search for Nirvana by Clark David

Author:Clark, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7. Plant Empowered

“It's true. Hitler was a vegetarian.

Just goes to show, vegetarianism,

not always a good thing.

Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide.”

- Bill Bailey

​While doing some promotional work, I took my 17-year-old daughter Emily to Los Angeles with me recently to look at film schools. It was an absolutely amazing three days of being whisked around to radio stations and local news shows, along with visiting campuses and enjoying delicious vegan meals. As we walked around L.A., we passed numerous bars and alleys that the ghosts of my addictions still haunted. It was not lost on me that there may have been an alternate life for Emily—one where I wasn’t around for her—a life where, instead of listening to me talk about redemption, rock-bottom, running, and eating plants, she might have been writing her own book about how she made peace with how her father drank himself to death when she was four.

​Many times I noticed her listening intently as various media people asked me personal questions about my divorce, my addictions and what caused me to get so lost. I was grateful to be able to show my daughter how honesty and vulnerability can set us all free and felt happy to have my daughter there by my side as I discussed my thoughts and ideas about the power of all human beings to change.

When the media appointments were all finished, Emily, only somewhat tongue in cheek, said that if I were unable to do another interview, she could easily fill in for me. “It would be so easy,” she laughed. “You get the same two questions over and over, and I think I have your responses memorized.”

​“Am I that predictable?”

​“Maybe not the exact words,” she explained, “but I definitely think I got it down.”

​She then broke into an impression of me that literally had me holding my sides. She was right, too. It didn’t matter who I was sitting down with, whether I was talking about my training for a charity, an MMA fight, or about hallucinating while running Badwater. “Where do you get your protein?” and “Do you think you traded addictions—from alcohol to running?” always seemed to be the topics.

​Strangely, I didn’t need to be sitting behind a microphone to be asked to go through the litany of my ideas and thoughts on these matters. The same questions came up time and time again—at restaurants, in Ubers, and whenever I took up an impromptu conversation with the people around me, as I am known to do. There is no doubt that I am a talker. I make friends with anyone that has the unfortunate timing to be near me as I go about my day. I ask people what they ordered from menus, I comment on people’s clothes, ask what music is playing in their headphones, and I always catch people off guard when they make eye contact and I respond with my standard…“How’s life?”

​Despite all that, I am not one of those vegans who preaches to the world what my nutritional practices are.

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