Life is good.

I want to talk to you about something that I think is more important than anything else we've discussed so far. Everything else pales in comparison to this subject.

This is not hyperbole. I want to talk about something important and difficult to talk about.

I'm being up front about this because I want to warn you ahead of time. I want you to be ready.

I need you to read this whole post.

When you see what this is about, I need you to keep reading and not close the window on your phone.

With all that out of the way...

Let's talk about death.

Death is scary.

I have spent a good portion of my life doing everything I possibly could to avoid the subject of death. My fear of death was a major part of my decision to not eat meat for most of my twenties.

The way I saw it, anything I could do to not contribute to death was good. Life is good, death is bad. Therefore, I should not cause unnecessary death. That's just simple logic.

I wasn't upfront about this motivation even within my own head. Thinking about death was too much for me. I had to frame it as suffering. I told myself it was morally wrong to cause suffering, therefore I shouldn't eat meat.

There were some flaws in my philosophy though.

If you know me personally, you know that I'm always asking questions. These questions don't stop when I'm not talking. In fact, one of the only things that can really get me to stop talking is when I get lost in some chain of asking questions and thinking about the answers inside my own head.

One of the things that really bothered me about my diet as a vegan was the origins of my food. I started thinking about where the food I was eating came from and whether or not those origins were good.

What I found was that a huge amount of my calories were either derived from ecologically and economically unsound monocrop production models or from locations that required long distance shipping. Often times it was both.

I'm talking calories, not vitamins and nutrients. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that since we were going to farmers markets to get veggies that I was doing good, but the reality was my calories were not derived from local production.

The more I looked into monocultures, the more I saw the issues with these models.

We take a piece of land, remove all the trees, till all non-woody vegetaion under, then spray chemicals to kill everything living. We replace what was once an abundant polyculture with a single species. We genetically modify that species so that we can continue spraying chemicals that kill all other life, either directly or indirectly.

Keep in mind, this model of destruction is the primary source of calories for all modern diets. The majority of the calories you eat to this day likely stem from this model.

The root of this model is death and destruction. If you don't kill everything except the target species, the system fails.

It was a sobering moment when I realized that hiding from death by not eating large animals may have actually been causing more death and suffering.

The cravings, health, and stength side of all this is a conversation for a different day.

Right now, I'm just interested in talking about the ethics of death.

I think that a lot of the mistakes we are making when it comes to managing living systems stem from our fear of death.

We don't want to think about death, so we hide from it. When we hide from death, we hide from thinking hard about any living system.

Many people are choosing to not think critically about where their food comes from so that they don't have to confront the realities of life.

You can't have life without death. Everything that lives, dies.

We don't like that reminder of our own mortality. If we seriously engage with our food systems, we seriously engage with living systems. We seriously engage with death.

Instead, we happily walk into the super market and erase the connection to where our food comes from. We don't want to know. Thinking that the burger we're eating came from a living, breathing cow hits too close to home.

If you let this fear of death rule you, the only good options are to exist in a state of willful ignorance about where your food comes from or eliminate meat from your diet and claim that this somehow means you haven't caused any death, even though you may actually be causing more individual deaths than if you ate from the largest organisms.

I do not mean to offend anyone. If you are vegan, I wholeheartedly support that choice. I wanted it to work for me.

The shift for me was when I began thinking that my true obligation was to honor life, not to avoid death.

I have ended every thing I have shared publically with the line "Life is good." This has been a conscious choice.

If you flip through the last several years of daily journals of mine, you would find that same line at the end of every single one. This is the foundational axiom of my belief system.

I state this as a reminder to cherish every moment we have. It is a reminder to honor life with my actions, not to let my actions be guided by a fear of death.

I am committed to acting in a way that facilitates life and happiness.

I accept the reality that life means death.

I choose to act in a way that contributes to life. I choose to act in a way that contributes to happiness. I choose to honor life.

Let's say that you were a little ball of energy with the option to come into the beingness that is life but you knew that you would eventually die. Given what you know about life, would you choose to make that trade?

Would you choose to exist for some period of time and experience the wonders that are life?

I would. I don't know what the alternative to life is. It may be nothingness. It may be oneness. All I really know is that I like living. Living is really great. All the drama and struggle and growth and creation is intoxicating. I love every second of being alive.

When I choose to breed my sheep, that act is giving life to a lamb. When I choose to give that lamb an exceptional life, I believe that I am doing good.

The choice to eat a particular piece of meat is also a choice to support the life of that particular animal.

What type of life are you choosing to support? Do the animals you eat live well? If you don't eat animals, are your calories coming from systems that facilitate life overall or are they coming from monocultures and systems that are rooted in destruction?

Remember, the very moment an animal comes into life, it's death is guaranteed.

I had an opportunity to take over this farm.

When I chose to manage this land, I had some big decisions to make. I decided to commit to models that facilitated life and happiness. I decided that I would do whatever it took to make this little chunk of land conducive to good outcomes.

When I stand at the top of my hill and see our farm covered in lightning bugs while there are none in the neighboring fields, I know that we are doing something right.

When I see birds circling above our farm and ignoring the soy fields next door, I know that we are on to something.

When I see deer and turkey and rabbits and countless other wildlife choosing to hang out on our farm, I wonder what it would be like if all farms adopted a "life is good" philosophy.

When I choose to bring life onto this farm, I consider it my duty to make sure that creature is happy.

When I choose to manage a living system, I accept the fact that to do it well, I must also manage death.

I can only take this farm and increase the life and happiness it sustains if I manage both life and death well.

I don't think using life to sustain life is evil.

Wasting life is evil. Disrepecting life is evil. Taking life in a dishonorable way is evil.

I don't care what you eat.

But I think it is critically important that you evaluate where your food is coming from.

Where are you getting your calories?

Does the production of your calories result in more or less happiness?

Are the farmers living good lives?

Is the land your food comes from helping make the world a better or worse place?

Are you honoring life with your choices?

To ignore these question is to give death and evil the upper hand. Think critically about what you are eating.

Choose to support life and happiness.

Life is good.