I haven’t posted anything about Anthony Bourdain. Although he didn’t impact my life as much as Scott Hutchison did, Bourdain’s suicide still struck me deeply. I watched his shows for years, read several of his books, and was a fan of his overall approach to life.
I’ve written before about the irony of my love of travel books given the general lack of traveling in my life. Bourdain lived a life, at least the one that we saw on screen, that I would have loved to have lived. Spending most of the last quarter decade traveling to places big and small, familiar and unknown, and finding ways of connecting with the people in those locations while sharing their stories with Americans in hopes of broadening our horizons. So many people these days live in fear of anything that is different. Bourdain’s shows were a forceful plea that we’re more alike than the people fanning the flames of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia would have you believe.
I saw this map yesterday and thought it was the best distillation of what Bourdain was all about. He didn’t travel just to fill his passport or check boxes on a list. Every dot on this map is a testament to his efforts to get people to open their eyes, get outside their comfort zones, and understand that most of the world – whether around the block or on the other side of the globe – live very differently than we do.
