Address
This IsWater
Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says
“Morning, boys. How's the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes
What the hell is water?
The Default Setting
But maybe the driver of the minivan is a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.”
It's the end of the work day and the traffic is bad. The minivan in front of you is moving too slowly and you want to scream.
Everybody Worships
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
Money & Things
Power
Intellect
Spiritual Principles
The Grocery Store
It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
“You get to the checkout line. The person in front of you has 15 items in the 10-items-or-less line. The cashier is slow. The cart has a wobbly wheel.”
Default Setting: This is hell. I'm tired. I hate this. Why is this happening to ME?
What Education Really Means
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”
That is being educated, and understanding how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
This is not a matter of virtue—it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
The Choice
You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Alarm goes off. You're tired. You hit snooze.
I choose to start my day with intention. This moment is mine to shape.
Rush hour traffic. Everyone is cutting you off.
These people are idiots. Why is everyone so rude?
Click to Choose Awareness →Lunch break. You're eating alone at your desk.
I'm so lonely. No one cares about me.
Click to Choose Awareness →“The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.”
The Day You Will Die
You will become totally, completely, imperially alone at the very second you die.
“Everything you think you know is just a story. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.”
The mystical oneness of all things deep down. That we are all connected. That there is something larger than ourselves.
Real Freedom
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
This Is Water
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness.
This is water.
This is water.
Kenyon College 2005
This Is
Water
David Foster Wallace
The Physical Manifestation
The transcript of the 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, captured in physical form.
* Manifesting awareness in paper form
Deepen Awareness
Further explorations into consciousness, meaning, and the human condition.
