Continuing my tradition of always being late to the party, I’ve recently become obsessed with the Travel Channel show “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” which is now in its fifth season.
Bourdain is a New York City chef and author.
Each week he travels around the world to explore the food, culture and customs of lands near and far.
What sets Bourdain apart is his ability to avoid the tourist traps and popular neighborhoods, and find the authentic soul of the place he’s visiting, whether it’s eating chicken feet in Korea or seal eyeball in Northern Canada.
Bourdain’s gift is the ability to distill his travel experiences into the universal truths that tie this world together.
While any travel host can show you people eating chicken feet in Korea, Bourdain gets to the heart of why they eat it and what it means to their culture.
In many ways, he’s a poet.
While I’m certainly not very well-traveled, I’ve started noticing themes in all of his shows that I, myself, have discovered in all my trips across various states during my career as a journalist.
Perhaps the most important is “people are people”.
No matter where Bourdain travels, no matter the color of their skin, the god they worship, or the language they speak, people have the same universal needs: to eat, sleep, protect their families, and make their lives better.
It’s a simple lesson, but one that seems so hard for some people to understand these days.
Wherever you turn, people try to pigeonhole those who are different from them: black/white. Red state/blue state. Mexican/American. Christian/Muslim/Jew.
How many times have you said “New Yorkers are rude” or “Californians are hippies”?
Probably just as many times as someone in those areas has said “southerners are hicks”.
In your heart you probably know there are hippies right next door to you, hicks in New York, and rude people in California, but it’s easy to blurt out a stereotype when you’re confronted by someone different than you and it makes you uncomfortable.
But when tempted to buy into stereotypes, resist it.
Instead, remember that you probably have more in common with that person than you have differences.
Around the world, people want to eat, sleep, and make their families’ lives better, just like you do.
And no matter where you go on this earth, a grill, an open fire, and a hunk of meat are pretty much universally accepted as pretty good things, even if one group prefers beef and another prefers seal.
Don’t believe me?
Watch Anthony Bourdain and see for yourself.
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