Whenever I am asked which famous person, dead or alive, I would choose to have dinner with, my answer is automatic: Anthony Bourdain. Without a doubt.
He has always been my compass for “cool” — a little bit due to his artful way with words; a little bit because he was very easy on the eyes; but a huge bit because despite his global influence and his iconic everybody-wants-to-be-him status, he never made it about himself. He insisted that his shows featured less footage of him and more on the people he covered — a metaphor for how he related with the world. His mental cameras were always turned outwards, away from him, fully celebrating his subject matter. He probed and dug, seeking to understand, and to uncover the soul of their people.
Every week, in the pursuit of authentic stories and insights, he taught us how to LISTEN. That to reeeally do so takes a willingness to step outside our comfort zone and enter uncomfortable territory; to sit on the floor, squat or do what it takes to (literally and figuratively) start on equal footing; to put our phones down, break bread (or beer) and be fully absorbed in the stories. To listen, Bourdain showed us, is to admit that we know nothing and to risk looking foolish with our questions; to suspend judgement despite our deeply held truths; and to be unafraid to admit we are wrong.
Bourdain proved time and again that when we listen, we reveal our shared human experience. He confirmed that in the most foreign of lands, among the remotest of tribes, there are people just like us: “The world is filled with people doing the best they can. Who love their kids. Who would like to put on a clean shirt every morning, to have access to food and water. Who hope. Just like everybody else.” By doing so, he made the world a little bit smaller. A little bit friendlier.
This world he honored was hit hard by the news of his passing. In this selfie-obsessed era when our mental cameras are constantly turned towards ourselves, when deep personal interactions have become so rare, we lost the last big breath of freshly self-effacing, irreverently generous, sweet air.
I am heartbroken that he took his life. And dumbfounded. In a roundabout way, it brought to mind a passage I had recently read — that when we regularly reflect on our death, when we deeply understand our own impermanence and become so intimate with our life’s fleeting nature, an internal upheaval occurs. Temporal pursuits fall away and the only true goals remain: love and knowledge.
I wonder if Bourdain often thought about his death. Could a secret familiarity with his own impermanence have influenced his enlightened existence? We’ll never know. But for all of us still reeling, perhaps a flicker of a consolation is that through him, we were reminded that humility, compassion and the pursuit of wisdom are still the ultimate badass.
RIP.