The coffee shop in Tiong Bahru was packed, but the noise barely registered. At a corner table sat two women who'd gone vegan together during university fifteen years ago. Same documentary, same tears, same midnight promise to never contribute to animal suffering again.
Today, only one of them was still vegan.
"I failed," Anna said, stirring oat milk into her latte with unnecessary vigor. "Sarah's still going strong, and I couldn't even make it six months."
Sarah reached across the table, touched her friend's hand. "You didn't fail. You're here with me right now, aren't you? Choosing plant milk?"
"That's different. I'm not... I'm not really vegan."
"Says who?"
That question hung in the air like incense. Says who? It would echo through many conversations over the following weeks—conversations with people who'd sustained their veganism for over a decade. What emerged wasn't a story about willpower or moral superiority or even depth of compassion. It was about something far more fundamental: how people construct the very identities they inhabit.
And once the pattern becomes visible, it's impossible to unsee—not just in veganism, but everywhere.
The thriving vegans all had something in common, and it wasn't what anyone might expect. Take Marcus, a management consultant who travels three weeks out of every month. He's been vegan for twelve years. When asked how he handles client dinners in countries where veganism is virtually unknown, he laughed.
"I do my best," he said. "Sometimes that means eating plain rice and vegetables. Sometimes it means accepting that the soup stock might have fish in it. I don't interrogate waiters in languages I don't speak. I don't make scenes. I just do what I can with joy rather than what I can't with misery."
"But doesn't that mean you're not really vegan?" came the follow-up, channeling Anna's earlier anxiety.
"According to whom?" There it was again. "I'm not performing veganism for anyone. I'm living my values as fully as the moment allows."
This wasn't the answer one might expect from someone who'd maintained a plant-based diet for over a decade. If anything, the assumption would be that the long-termers would be more rigid, more pure. Instead, the opposite turned out to be true.
Diane, a veteran animal rights activist, told the story of the time she ate birthday cake at her nephew's party, knowing it probably contained eggs and dairy. "Twenty years ago, I would have made a scene or sulked in the corner," she said. "Now? I recognize that my relationship with my family is part of how I create a more compassionate world. One slice of cake doesn't erase two decades of advocacy."
"But how do you reconcile—"
"I don't," she interrupted. "That's the point. I don't need to reconcile anything. I'm not a vegan robot programmed with unbreakable rules. I'm a human being who cares deeply about animals and makes choices aligned with that care. Sometimes those choices are complex."
The pattern was becoming clear. The vegans who thrived long-term didn't see veganism as a rigid identity they had to defend. They saw it as a practice they were constantly exploring. They held their values deeply but their identity lightly.
This connects to a concept worth examining closely—something that might be called "fluid integrity." It's the capacity to remain committed to values while allowing the expression of those values to evolve. As the Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê writes poignantly in his debut book Laughing in the Face of Chaos:
"Our evolutionary path is not about striving for an unattainable ideal of perfection, but about embracing the depth of our essence and allowing it to guide our actions in creating a meaningful impact on the world."
But here's what's easy to miss: fluid integrity isn't just about avoiding rigidity. It's about constructing identities that enhance rather than constrain the deepest commitments.
James illustrates this lesson powerfully. He'd "failed" at veganism twice before succeeding on his third attempt, now eight years strong. "The first two times, I tried to become someone else entirely," he explained. "I threw out everything in my kitchen, announced it on Facebook, joined all the groups. I was performing veganism rather than practicing it."
"What changed the third time?"
"I stopped trying to be 'a vegan' and started exploring how James"—he pointed to himself—"could best contribute to reducing animal suffering. Turns out, James needs flexibility. James needs to experiment. James needs permission to be imperfect."
His self-reference in third person wasn't accidental. He was highlighting the distinction between his core self and the various identities he might try on. Veganism wasn't who he was—it was something James did, one of many ways James expressed his values.
This shift—from being to doing—appeared in every successful long-term story. Elena, who initially went vegan for health reasons seventeen years ago, described how her motivation evolved without triggering an identity crisis. "First it was about my body. Then I learned about factory farming and it became about animals. Now it's also about the environment. My reasons keep expanding, but I don't need to defend my original motivation or pretend it was pure from the start."
The numbers back this up. While the infamous statistic claims 84% of vegetarians and vegans abandon their diet, the EPIC-Oxford Study found that 73% of those who identified as vegetarian or vegan in the 1990s were still following those dietary lifestyles over 20 years later. The difference? The study looked at people who'd maintained the practice long enough to integrate it into their lives rather than wear it like an uncomfortable costume.
But here's what surprised
