What Was I Made For?

There is this reel I saw about 2 years ago, a short clip of the documentary "M6NTHS" about the meat industry. It was a 15-second video about a piglet hiding in the back of an enclosure; it was dark, dirty, and solitary — the perfect spot where no one could find him. He was on the floor resting his head up against the wall, looking tired and cold. 

I wondered how he got there. Was he lost? Was he trying to find his mom or food? Was he curious? But it was really clear why he was hiding, or actually who  he was hiding from: humans. There was something unpleasant about humans to this little guy, especially in a place like that where screams from other pigs meant pain. In the video, there is this one moment when you hear, from the distance, an older pig screaming. The thing that broke me is how quickly he flinches when he listens to it. He lets out the most frightened little cry I've ever heard, and hyperventilates for a brief moment. He then curls up to protect himself. From such a young age, he had developed PTSD when hearing other pigs’ screams. It then looks like he sheds a tear and closes his eyes, hoping nothing bad happens. 

That singular part of the video made me cry nonstop for 10–15 minutes. I felt so much sadness and anger and frustration. I wanted so badly to hold him tightly, escape from that horrible place, bring him home, and tell him, “Don’t worry, buddy, everything will be okay. You are with me.” You could say my “motherly instincts” came over me. The worst of it all is that I couldn’t do anything about it — just sit there and watch through my screen, wondering that just like the pig screaming, he will have to face the same fate as well at some point. And not only him, but all those little piglets in meat factories who spend EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES in constant fear.

M6NTHS docufilm by
 Eline Helena Schellekens, 2018.

Of course, it didn’t help that the background song of the video was Billie Eilish’s song “What Was I Made For?”, thus the title of this article. It was a popular song at the time on social media. The melancholic piano in the back and Billie singing “what was I made for” over and over again, as if the piglet was wondering that, made me feel even worse. I put myself in his place, and I would have the same question to myself — what am I made for? Why am I in this place? What is this place? Maybe that’s a human way to look at it, but his feelings are very clear to anyone who watches this video. He doesn’t communicate with words, but you can see clearly through his body language.

Man, I think about it while writing this and it just makes me sad. It’s a horrible picture. I don’t go back to it often, but maybe I should — to think before deciding to eat meat. In some ways or another, my friends, family, and I keep supporting the meat industry. I know, how hypocrite of me. For several reasons that I will explain in another article, I started eating meat again; however, I want to stop eating it soon. I want to stop supporting such a horrible industry.

That is one of the values I see in social media. We can change our behavior if something inspires us, just like this little piglet’s story inspired me. And it starts with awareness.