The cookie

Friday, Jun. 12, 2015

The other day I got a cookie – the kind you eat, not the computer kind – and it plunged me into a moral dilemma.

The circumstances are germane to the situation: Two friends and I had an early lunch at a bakery in Santa Fe prior to attending Archbishop Wester’s installation. We were required to be seated in the basilica by 1:30 p.m., but before then we wanted to visit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, so as we left the bakery one of my friends bought each of us a cookie to have as a snack later. 

“Later” turned out to be just before 5 p.m., when we left the basilica. The cookie probably would have tided us over to dinner, which was at 7 p.m., but – and here’s where the quandary started – the friend who bought the cookies took one bite of hers, declared it not calorie-worthy, and threw it into a garbage can. 

I admired her carefree action, because I wanted to follow her example, but I couldn’t. She was right – the cookie wasn’t worth the calories that would be gained by eating it – but I was raised to not waste food, and the only thing wrong with that cookie was that it was too dry. It probably was made to be consumed with coffee or milk, but just because I wasn’t in a position right then to acquire a cup didn’t give me adequate cause to cast the cookie into the trash, at least not to my way of thinking.

Of course, this attitude begs the question of why I should eat the cookie if I wasn’t going to enjoy it. It’s not as though I needed to consume it to survive. Nor would I be wasting my own money – I didn’t buy the thing. Neither would I be hurting my friend’s feelings by tossing out a gift she had given, because she had already chucked hers.

On the other hand, something Pope Francis said two years ago is burned in my brain: “Throwing away food is like stealing from the table of the poor and hungry.” I understand and agree with his point, and ever since I read that I have made every effort to be conscious, when eating out, of ordering smaller portions or taking a doggie bag home. It’s harder to eat all the groceries we buy. My worst offense is vegetables – I like to pretend I’ll bring salads for lunch at work, but all too often the spinach and cucumbers sit in the refrigerator for weeks until they rot.  

I’m getting better about not wasting food at home, but in the case of the cookie, it’s not as though I could give the thing, which already had a bite out of it, to someone who was in need of it, or who would actually like it.

Then again, what was to be gained by eating it, other than a soothed conscience?

So there I was, stuck with a dry, crumbly cookie in my bag and a moral predicament on my mind. It did occur to me that I was being too scrupulous, in the Catholic sense, but I discarded the notion because I hadn’t gone so far as to think that I would sin if I threw the cookie away.

I never did resolve my moral dilemma. As for the cookie, I confess that its final fate had nothing to do with ethics. It was still in my bag the next morning when I got to the airport, so I ate it because I was hungry. 

It was, after all, just a cookie.