Why is it called a commencement speech if we only hear it when we finish? I’d argue that starting college is just as big a step forward as starting your life after college, especially when you consider how much college can change people. Nevertheless, David Foster Wallace’s speech, This is Water, given to Kenyon College’s graduating Class of 2005, is something worth reading (the audio recording is marred by audience laughter in the middle of some pretty serious and important points. The laugh track can’t make an already good show that much better). It’s short, sweet, not overly presumptuous, and insightful. Throughout the speech, Wallace’s primary point is simple: Don’t live your life on autopilot.
To be clear, it’s impossible to do the speech justice just by picking apart a few quotes - it’s exactly why you should read the whole thing for yourself, and why the words below have been written and re-written more times than I’d care to admit. Still, This is Water is a fantastic read, one that I hope to return to periodically as a good reminder to myself to take the wheel myself every now and then.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.
In class, it’s easy to go on autopilot and just (if you’re really academic) take notes without really digesting the information. It’s easier to pull out your phone and kill an hour on games/texting instead of trying to engage in conversation with the person sitting next to you. Walking around campus, it’s easy to just focus on getting from AND to BEL without really admiring the landscape and scenery that the school likely spent millions of dollars on. Eating food, it’s easy to just mindlessly chew and swallow what you need for sustenance without pausing to really try and pick up on the subtle flavors of soy and sesame in your bag of Trader Joe’s Chicken Fried Rice. These things are easy because our minds are usually fairly efficient; to the extent we can not think about things we usually don’t. Not only do you ignore swallowing, breathing, blinking, and other bodily functions 99.9% of the time, you’ve probably also been ignoring the length of time since you last reached out to call your grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/etc. to say hello.
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way…And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
I’m okay with not finding what I was looking for, I can deal with prices being higher-than-expected, and I don’t really comment on the corporate-beige feel of a Randall’s or Kroger. But long lines are absolutely frustrating and a waste of my time. Traffic is soul-destroying and proof that I need a better/closer job or home to cut down on commute time. The line at the Post Office or DMV is infuriating because of course people in front of me don’t have their stuff ready and so it takes them forever; I’m completely ready for the counter when I get there.
Perspective is what matters here - if you don’t change it, you’ll be resigned to thinking the same way, day-after-day, in your default setting. But a change in perspective - from killing time in traffic to your dedicated audiobook time, from long lines at the Post Office as time to meditate in the thankfully quiet environment, from waiting forever to checkout to people watching is often all it takes to turn a potentially angering experience into a positive one.
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.
This is more of an aside, but if you haven’t yet read it yet, Tim Urban’s thoughts on Forgettable Wednesdays are fantastic. It’s weird to think about philosophizing about relationships and picking a life partner (I tried it and my best friend said she was going to make sure it appeared at my wedding after a “Bro are you joking“), but it’s incredibly insightful.
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; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
Don’t live your life on autopilot.