I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain–until I met him

You may admire the reckless behavior and carefree attitude of the rockstar in part because you’d like to worry a bit less about what other people thought or whether that party will compromise your sleep score.

Not because you’d like to do the exact same thing they do.

To me, at least, the idea seems an uncomfortable and absurd idea from 1 person much less many people

Where I think that does not work is when there is a deep resonance in shared experiences, these two had many including some really dark problems of addiction and thoughts of self-harm. I think the author is calling out all of it.

But he was (obviously) deeply troubled.

Parts Unknown, S6E6 - Borneo, to me, shows this the most. He is invited by a tribe to slaughter a pig for the Gawai harvest festival and says that initially he thought he might have a hard time with it. "But, I have been hardened by the last ten years", and follows it by saying that it ends up being easy and that he only feels relief when the pig finally dies, and admits "I'm not sure what that says about me".

It´s not about Bourdain being unpleasant at all, much by the contrary, its about the author realizing Bourdain path was not for everybody, and it seems, not for the author at the end.

You can admire their dedication to the mission, their wealth, ingenuity, etc.

But it’s easy to forget that for many of them, it comes at the expense of seeing their kids, spending time with their spouse, and their own health.

I’d much rather sell a company for $20m and have a happy marriage than be a billionaire stuck in a cycle of divorces and estranged children.

One is that he worked as a middling chef for decades and only had his breakout success in his 40s. I think this made him much different than your generic essayist/journalist, and also let him speak to different kinds of people. He became a symbol that international travel, trying new things, and living life to its fullest doesn’t have to be an early 20s thing followed by decades of monotony.

He was also uniquely principled (he’d finance some episodes himself) and speak to people on all sides politically, without pandering to either.