What Have You Been Learning Lately?

Anthony Bourdain was my godfather of gregarious adventure. I admired his raw honesty, open mindedness, and the way he sought to expand understanding and appreciation of other cultures. He inspired boldness in me to reach out into the world and eat everything. This feels a bit like the loss of a distant but beloved mentor. I will miss his perspective and mourn the work he'd yet to create. When I was in university, I spent a year working San Francisco Suicide Prevention's crisis hotline. I needed volunteer hours for a class and picked the hotline because at one point in my youth I'd found help through a similar resource. When I tell people about my experience, they expect it to have been depressing. While there were certainly very difficult, haunting moments, the work was largely heartwarming and entirely rewarding. Most of our callers were experiencing suicidal ideation but were not actively suicidal; they didn't have a plan, they were just lonely. They found comfort