Thank you for sharing your "lightbulb" moment. We all have these amazing "lightbulb" moments in life and sometimes the light fades out and sometimes it stays on, shinning on our path for the rest of our lives, even guiding us to compassion for all beings not just animals. I simply can't see that it is possible to care profoundly and deeply for suffering human beings if you don't care about the suffering of all beings.

I had my own "lightbulb" moment many years ago when I saw a button with a dear pig's face on it, and the words "I don't eat my friends" and I realized that I wasn't eating cats and dogs so I had better not eat pigs or chickens or cows or any other sentient being either.

Now the whole world is accepting that not eating animals is the solution to so many of our human caused assaults on the earth and other beings. I have been looking forward a long time to the day that eating meat is treated with the same scorn that smoking is. With the smoking issue, its second hand harm that became the issue but there is second hand harm to eating animals too isn't there? in this case it isn't the person sitting at the next table who is being harmed its animals who suffer the second hand harm. What about a new motto for a button? A picture of a terrified or butchered factory farmed animal with the words "Eating meat causes second hand harm"?