If I’m a moralist, how come I eat meat, my friend wants to know.

Moralist does not mean moral any more than alpinist means lord of the mountain or essayist Montaigne. The -ist suffix means you’re working on the preceding noun. Any moralists who think they’re “moral” miss the point of the exercise, which is to figure where morality might steer.

There are plenty of practical reasons to forego eating flesh – my cardiologist would cheer, my pants would pinch less – but to abstain out of principle is a tricky calculus.  There are no right answers here, but can Gandhi, Einstein, Leonardo, Tolstoy, Ben Franklin, Kafka. Venus Williams, and Bill Clinton all be wrong?

Other creatures eat what they eat without remorse. They do not value life, they live. Puppy Henry’s tastes and mine seldom align, but so what, he shrugs.

Only humans behave morally: that is, we decide what to do, we don’t simply obey instinct. (Whether we decide or acquiesce to a complex combination of hidden forces is a topic for another day. We imagine we decide – that’s what matters here.) If I eat meat or not, I’ve chosen to. Our choices define who we are.

There are plenty of good reasons to be vegetarian – health, global warming, clothing budget, to inspire others. I could easily talk myself into it – only, I don’t choose to. First, I agree with Henry – whoever made me made me an omnivore. Second, I consider the question misleading, the semblance of virtue, not the real deal.

With moral thinking – as with any – one must keep one’s eye on the ball, focus on what’s most important and avoid getting lost in subsidiary complications. The question that haunts me is how to live: am I making the most of this gift of time? I want to hear from myself at the finish line – rapidly approaching! – “Well, he did his best.”

What I did or didn’t eat doesn’t affect this verdict.

Why this indifference?

I do not value life – that’s for starters. Life is a fact, like air or water, a necessary precondition for action not precious per se. Our culture wastes zest and wealth preserving life past its utility. Doctors congratulate themselves for keeping moribunds malingering while tots who need care suffer malnutrition and neglect. When it’s time to go, I’d like to open a door and bid goodbye, but I expect it won’t be that easy or cheap. Life is what we make of it, not a physician’s say-so. Animals who die to feed us are fulfilling more of a purpose than bored idlers on a beach.

I’m not a vegetarian because I’ve got – if Henry will excuse the expression – bigger fish to fry. Food is fuel to keep my body chugging in a right direction. I care about tasty – you bet – no ascetic I – but food for me is filling, not fulfilling. For others food is a passion, even a mission: bless their devotion – and results! My mind forages elsewhere. To each his own.

Naturally competitive, humans tout our individual choices as superior. “We did the right thing, all things considered,” we’re likely to declare complacently. Few eulogies bemoan a wasted life.

Morality is a sterner taskmaster, less likely to grade us on a scale or blink at transgressions and omissions. It asks, “Is that what you think?” and then, “Is that what you really think?” By my lights, wasting time is culpable, eating animals negligible.

My answer to my friend is not an answer for him. We live by our own moral rules, no one else’s. It is so if we think so.