Mindware — A Timeless Reflection

This Is Water

David Foster Wallace — Kenyon College, 2005

~22 min listen 5 reflections One commencement speech

Two young fish are swimming along when they pass an older fish going the other way. He nods and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”

The two young fish swim on for a while. Eventually one of them looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

The parable that opens the speech

I

The Two Fish

The point is gentle — almost embarrassed: the most important realities are the hardest to see.

They’re the water you’re already in. So constant, so obvious, your brain stopped registering them.

The work isn’t finding new water. It’s noticing what’s already here.

The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. David Foster Wallace

II

Main Character Syndrome

You walk through life as the main character of your own movie.

Everyone else is a side character. The guy in line. The woman on her phone. The cashier who won’t make eye contact.

It’s not a moral failing. It’s the default — biology’s gift and burden. Every experience you’ve had has been routed through your own head. Of course you feel central.

Every side character is the main character of their own movie.

Same hunger. Same fear. Same long bad day. That remembering isn’t automatic — it has to be re-chosen every time the line slows down.

III

The Real Value of a Real Education

Learning how to think isn’t stockpiling knowledge.

It’s having some control over what you pay attention to. That’s it. That’s the whole point.

Not the freedom to win arguments or earn more. The freedom to choose the meaning instead of letting your defaults choose it for you.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. David Foster Wallace

IV

The Supermarket and the Traffic Jam

The whole argument lives in the mundane. Not the dramatic. The grocery store after a long day. The slow SUV. The rude cashier.

Default story: everyone is in your way. The world is conspiring against you, personally, today.

Chosen story: maybe she’s been up since 4am with a parent in the hospital. Maybe the SUV is rushing a kid to the ER.

You don’t actually know. But the default isn’t true either.

The story is a choice. Choose the one that doesn’t corrode you.

V

Everyone Worships Something

There is no such thing as not worshipping.

The only choice is what.

The only choice we get is what to worship. David Foster Wallace

Money. Beauty. Status. Intellect. Power. None of it evil. Each one shares the same flaw — it quietly tells you that you don’t have enough, and never will.

The worship itself generates the lack.

The danger isn’t that they’re evil. It’s that they’re unconscious. They’re the water. You don’t notice them until they’ve taken most of your years.

This is water.
This is water.

The discipline of re-noticing — every day