Anthony Bourdain's suicide brought out the professional mourners.  None, it seemed to me, spoke to the real issue of why a guy like that would commit suicide.  He had it all.  Wealth.  Fame.  Women.  Travel.  What was missing?  I think we all know.

You reach that guy's age (61) and realize your life has been for nothing.  You had accolades, hot chicks, money – but no meaning to any of it.  No kids to love you, no wife to aggravate and fuss over you, just pretend-friends to make much of you while you're still a sought after celeb.  Lose that, and you lose their interest.

Something important is missing.  You have no responsibility to another.  Nobody to worry about, to care about how he feels or wonder where he is or when he'll get home.  In a real sense, that mutual sense of responsibility is the heart and soul of love.

You, you're not special to anybody.

Realizing this, you're aware of a hole in your core.  You're all hollow inside.  You chased after the wrong things, prized the wrong goals, attained the wrong pinnacles.  The vaunted freedom was great until you realized, at 61, that it wasn't freedom at all.

It was desperation.

It's probably not cowardly to kill yourself, but surely it's shortsighted.  Things usually look better in the morning, more positive, less desperate, but you do have to give morning the chance to show up.

Part of me feels sorry for a man like that, but another part realizes that, given a chance to do it over, he would do wrong again what he did wrong this time.  If he couldn't figure it out with all those advantages...or did the advantages just get in the way?