Last year, there was a Substack article that went viral about Anthony Bourdain that included the quote “He saw everything. And still, it wasn’t enough.” A lot of people found some sort of solace in this idea, that someone who had the mindset or experiences Bourdain had still could succumb to the inexplicable melancholy of life. This quote, even a year later, circulates on the internet and can be found under any Bourdain edit, discussion, etc. However, I can’t help but feel like I’m in the small group that disagrees with this quote, and worse, find it slightly unsettling, and it’s something I want to understand more, at least to an extent.
Maybe it’s the “…still, it wasn’t enough” part of the quote that unsettles me the most.
When I first heard this quote, all I could think about was: what does it mean for life and experience to not be enough? What does it even mean for life to be “enough”? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to think about these topics, and I am not an exception to going down rabbit holes of existentialism. But I have a personal qualm with this idea that people like Bourdain, who have such an inexplicable, nuanced understanding of the world, are inherently beholden to being a figurehead of life itself and thus incapable of having the same emotions that so many people go through. Bourdain, to me, is someone who did understand it. It can be described as a lot of things — food, politics, the way of life, etc. People often speak of these things in a scholarly way — which can often be deterring to people who don’t like the stuffiness of academics. But Bourdain didn’t. I think his allure is that he unintentionally came across as genuine, authentic, and matter-of-fact in an unashamed way that a lot of people themselves wish they could be. Simultaneously, that’s how we ended up with the confusion about his death, and consequently his life. When someone is all-knowing, authentic, and unabashedly themselves, how could they choose death?
I don’t write this article to speculate about Bourdain’s death or criticize the writer who initially came up with this quote. However, I do think it led me to a lot of my own self-reflection in what it means to live enough. I do the due diligence now that I’m older: I talk to people, try new foods, reach out to my friends who don’t reach out to me, I laugh too loud or speak loudly enough for everyone to hear, I ask people questions I don’t need the answer to just to hear them talk, and I try to give as much grace as I can to my friends and family. But being cognizant of all this — trying to live my life well enough for it to be considered “enough” is a tough feat. I do these things, and I at times still feel a sense of discontentment. People talk about how you can’t compare yourself or your experiences to those around you, but I think that this is something entirely different. I get bored being where I am, but I simultaneously know that being anywhere else would bring me the same feeling. I wonder more often than I’d like to admit that if this all life is — is feeling lonely and a sense of discontentment no matter where you are, no matter how much you embrace the food, people, the current moment you’re in, if this feeling is something you can ever truly run away from. I don’t know if I’ve come up with an answer for that question yet, either.
When I think about Bourdain and this issue of life being enough; I also can’t help but to think about my privilege in thinking about these things and overintellectualizing my brain into a pretzel. I am in a good enough position to be staring at my ceiling thinking about how my life could be more, to dedicate my time and energy to think about this while others are doing; and I think that it’s important to acknowledge. Overintellectualizing your life is a privilege most people don’t have, and I also believe that the conversation around overintellectualizing your life and feelings comes from an absurd bit of the internet that, in one way or another, is a bit obsessed with itself, and namely, privileged. I say this because I want people to understand that I am aware, at least to an extent, about what it means to think about these things within the context of my life.
I guess I don’t know if anything is ever enough in life, including life itself. I think that maybe being grateful for where I am and who I’m around is a good starting point, though. I think that Bourdain was grateful for what he had, too. Even if it might not have been enough.