Quote of the Week...from Anthony Bourdain

If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.
                                                                   ---Anthony Bourdain

I am deeply saddened to read this morning of the death...apparently from suicide...of renowned chef, traveler, and television star Anthony Bourdain.  CNN News, which features his long-running, award-winning show Parts Unknown and in which Bourdain would visit different exotic places across the world to get to know their people, culture, and cuisine, has been careful to present on the air the national suicide hotline number. I suppose that since this public figure was so widely followed, they feared some might emulate his example...I'll repeat it: 1-800-273-8255.  I'm not going to get into Mr. Bourdain's spiritual state, although once the details of his death have been fully ascertained, that may well have played some role in it.  We do know that he was very public in that travel and food reigned paramount on his priority list...I regarded him as a bit fearless in his ongoing quest to immerse himself in the cultures of others, sometimes in very dangerous circumstances in remote and even warring locales.  That's why, at this early time of knowing about his demise, I wonder...admittedly in abject ignorance...if he had decided to end it all, then why not instead go out performing something heroic for the benefit of others?  I liked Anthony Bourdain and thought that his show was the class act of television...but I have a different way from him of seeing the world and my place in it...

I disagree with the above quote of Anthony Bourdain in that I don't think it's necessary to constantly be on the move, hopping from one flight to the next, in order to understand others from their own perspective...to me that's more of a personal character or spiritual matter.  After all, in many of the places that Bourdain visited the people there were rooted in their homelands, often living out generations of lifetimes in small localities...yet they were complete in themselves, not wanting for lack of worldwide travel or incapable of gracious hospitality to strangers like Bourdain and his entourage.  I think a lot of folks, especially in this age of Facebook and Instagram where their friends can instantly post pictures of their exciting travel experiences, feel pressured to follow suit...lest they begin to feel that their own lives are humdrum and meaningless.  This to me is a false notion...but I have a different problem: I'm the diametric opposite of Anthony Bourdain when it comes to travel...

If you read or watched J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, you'll know that the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is quite content staying in his home in the Shire, never wanting to venture out away from his community.  But the wizard Gandalf changes all that and spurs him on to go with the dwarfs to retake their Lonely Mountain from the evil dragon Smaug.  He manages to survive his adventure, returns home, and then true to his nature remains there until his 111th birthday at the start of another Tolkien work, Lord of the Rings.  I'm like Bilbo in my tendency to be a homebody, only unlike him I have had no Gandalf knocking on my door and stirring me to travel and adventure.  But I'm getting along in years, being 61 (the same age as Anthony Bourdain), and I can't wait for any old wizard to get me "moving"...so I'll have to purpose to do it myself.  Step one is to finally get off my butt and get a passport...