suggested reading method
To best savour this artwork, please take a moment to eliminate distractions. Consider minimizing all other windows on your computer; putting other devices (phone, tv etc) aside; taking a deep breath, to the full extent of your lung capacity; and focusing solely on the “artwork” section.
Once you’ve processed that to your satisfaction, the rest of the post is optional reading, provided only to share my own impressions and reasons for choosing this piece.
artwork
“This Is Water” commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005. Here is the transcript.
interpretation
To be honest, it took me a while to get my head in the right space to start Spirit for 2022. Then I recalled this “commencement” speech (for the new year? Get it?! 🤪) reminding us how to find meaning in life.
At my previous teaching job, I tried showing this to select students as early as Grade 8. I think I might have lost them with the length of the speech: 20 minutes, by nature a long-form argument. I’d opted not to give away the message up front, but now I realize it’s totally fair if the nuanced nature of this material requires a second listen or some extra explanation. I still pull out new messages, each time I return to this.
If you don’t have time for the full speech, here is one of the most telling quotes:
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
That pairs well with this:
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 real freedom. 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.
I’ll try putting my takeaway from this speech in other words, if only to concretize my own understanding: Because we humans are lucky enough to be able to think for ourselves, we should take every advantage of this opportunity.
There is always a choice not to become trapped in my own head. In fact, there are myriad choices of how to view my mood, day, month, year, life. When I’m able to broaden my perspective – maybe by taking a walk, talking to a friend, or listening to beautiful music – I can project my consciousness outside myself, and perhaps remember that most of my modern-day problems are inconsequential.
To understand the full breadth of the human experience, there is simply no choice but to push beyond self-centred certainty; retain empathy for others and their ideas; and stay awake to the countless wonders of the world.
context
David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008), or DFW for short, was an author and English & creative writing professor at my alma mater, Pomona College. He has written many essays and short stories, though he is perhaps most famous for his inscrutable, 1000+ page novel The Infinite Jest. The story of his 5-day Rolling Stone interview was adapted into the movie The End of the Tour. Sadly DFW took his own life before I could meet him at Pomona, but his brilliant mind will live on forever through his words.
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