“Good people… we must never forget that Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Anthony Bourdain had the greatest job that show biz has ever produced. This man flew around the world and ate delicious meals with outstanding people. That man, with that job, hung himself in a luxury suite in France.”
While the show “Sticks and Stones” by Dave Chapelle was an entertaining masterpiece of comedy gold, I found it odd to start with such a starkly sad moment. Mr. Chapelle then went on to say that his friend that had a much worse life never thought of committing suicide. While I could see where he was coming from, on my voyage, I could understand Anthony Bourdain. Prolonged travel is not for everyone.
Waking, cleaning, eating, working, living, and then going to sleep. While this can be anyone’s life, when you travel, especially when you travel a lot, your waking hours can reduce themselves to a microcosm of life, a petite vie and petite mort daily. You meet people at your hotel, hostel, bar, on the street, and in transit. Those brief encounters you share together are all you have, like grains of sand passing together through an hourglass. Soon, sometimes too soon, they leave or you do. Meals you might share are only that. The drinks you consume together empty too quickly. Love affairs are over by sunrise. Every day is a life and every night is death, to be reborn the next day; in a new situation, with new people, in a new city, new country, or a new continent. Do that enough and the impermanence of life itself becomes self-evident. I do not fault those that stay home, in their jobs, careers, families, and countries that are able to anesthetize themselves to the fact that every day, we are all closer to that final journey to the undiscovered country from which no traveler has returned.
Conversely and yet paradoxically, it is freeing to wake each day knowing that its promise is always present. When one travels, it is seeing a world with new eyes and having new lives every day. It heightens you and gives you a sense of immediacy to do all things you want or need to do. And maybe the courage to do things you do not ordinarily allow yourself to do. It is a chance for constant renewal. It is filled with new possibilities and adventure, even in the seemingly banal or mundane. It is experiencing these intense vicissitudes, at least for me, that makes the inevitable last great voyage a bit more tolerable.
No comment yet, add your voice below!