It’s after noon on Friday of my four-day work week. I am getting home from driving errands with my wife.

As soon as we’re home, we get into the kitchen and cook lunch. My wife makes tzatziki—the ingredients I spit out from my head and the flavoring she crafts with her memory.

I throw 12 oz of frozen gyro meat into a skillet with a small amount of vegetable oil. I put over a lid and break down the slices “straight from the cone” as the meat thaws and turns into Mediterranean carnitas.

While we’re cooking, I warm up two pieces of whole wheat flatbread and slice a tomato. My wife thinly slices an onion. With a leftover lemon half, my wife makes lemon water for us. I spread tzatziki over the flatbreads, stack the meat, and top with tomatoes and onions. We pray. We eat. The food was delicious. The moment was good.

The synergy my wife and I demonstrate in the kitchen is not always functional, but we’re learning. The kinds of foods range from frozen to fancy. But we love all our food, and we love each other. The experience is filling and fulfilling. Fill and Fulfillment. That’s what I want to talk about today.

All food delivers empty calories when love is not in the picture. We can get our fill, but we are not guaranteed fulfillment. It doesn’t matter if we’re eating the food, making the food, or both.

This is why it’s sad to read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Though his book ends with confidence, I know how his life ends. Anthony Bourdain did amazing things in life, but maybe he didn’t know what to do with life.

While reading this book, I thought about Kurt Cobain. Let’s say his music is analogous to Anthony Bourdain’s food—catchy, appealing, daring, exceptional, popular. Yet, none of the music was so important to the creator that it fulfilled him. After all, the music didn’t save him. His life’s focus must have been unfulfilling.

All the same, perhaps none of the food and travel fulfilled Anthony Bourdain either. And fame, one of the least fulfilling conditions a human may experience, satisfied neither.

Here, I’m struggling with something I’ve come across before. In the 2013 documentary Kiss the Water, I learned the story of Megan Boyd, a renowned creator of fishing flies. The documentary is minimal and beautiful, mirroring the reverent isolation of salmon fishing.

The first time I saw the documentary was in 2014. The ending caught me off guard. I rewound it. It wasn’t what I expected. It was the truth.

In the 1980s, Boyd lost her eyesight, an imperative sense for crafting flies. She attempted to sell her flies (and perhaps trade them) to receive treatment for her vision. These flies were some of the most coveted fishing flies in the world, but they didn’t save her sight. The flies were ultimately unfulfilling. She lived out the rest of her life in a nursing home, where she died broke and alone.

Similar stories are found in music history. For every life in which an art or a craft appears to bring fulfillment, thousands of lives are broken in the context of those arts and crafts. For every Tom Dowd, there are thousands of Funk Brothers.

This is why Kitchen Confidential left me feeling empty. Our most prized fascinations—music, food, fishing flies, travel, writing—are ultimately unfulfilling. These gifts are given and taken, and they may not make a difference in the end. It reminds me of what a mystic said—that everything on this planet makes a living; humans just have to make a big deal out of it. There’s gotta be something more meaningful than our vocations.

My wife and I loaded the sink with more dishes. I took a nap, and she went to work. I woke up and began to apply for a full-time job. Then, I wrote this blog entry.

I’ll run a 10K through puddles and mud as the sun sets. After, I’ll clean the office, catch up on chores, and try to finish a book.

Later, when I’ve had my fill, I’ll go to the kitchen sink and wash the dishes my wife and I made. And, for some reason, it’ll feel more fulfilling than writing.