This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
In this rare peak into the personal life of the author of numerous bestselling novels, gain an understanding of David Foster Wallace and how he became the man that he was.
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.
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Community Reviews
I can see why several of my friends have recently read and recommended this even though it is an old speech. Could be good to revisit often. Of course we know that we are seeing the world through only our own perspective but practicing moving away from just that perspective is critical to a life well lived and probably happiness too.
this is such basic yet profound advice. I think this will be a book I read many times in my life this was so centering and I hope it continues to center me when I need to come back to it. I feel like this is a book a lot of people need right now.
This is another covid pick where I sensed that there was probably some relevance for this essay in our current situation but needed to reread this to figure out what exactly it might be.
I think it might be this. The essay provokes us to adjust our inherently self centered default mindset: to understand others, remain alive to our senses in the midst of daily routine, and to choose which ‘earthly gods’ we serve or at least recognize we have unconsciously made such a choice.
Covid has been a terrible thing. It has also been a disorienting thing and that disorientation is not so different from what DFW calls adjustment in this essays. Three daily realities of life in lockdown approximate DFWs call to reflect and choose what to think about:
1. Our relation to others and their inner worlds: We have an innate understanding that everyone we are speaking to is suffering, to some extent, and may be suffering a lot. Certainly, we remain deeply selfish in our starting understanding of the world. But because of Covid, we enter conversations with a more sympathetic understanding of the person we are speaking to - and that is not so far from DFW's recommendation in this essay.
2. Our relation to our daily lives: We have each had to rethink the ‘mundane routines’ around which we had built our lives - not because of the metacognition DFW recommends but because they were simply not possible to do any more. For at least a few months, nothing was mundane any more.
3. Our relation to our, often subconscious, aspirations: Whatever ‘earthly gods’ we were serving prior to covid, the experience has in some way revealed their impotence. I am sure those seeking power or wealth or personal image or what have you still do so, but it must suddenly feel a bit more silly in a world where you sometimes can’t leave your own home or go to your favorite restaurant or take your kid to the park.
In my case, despite daily reminders to remain humble, no experience has been as effective at reminding me of the limits of personal understanding as this one.
On a social level, DFWs observations help frame some of the broader discussions occurring around the lockdown. in the US at least the recent news has primarily been between those who refuse to release attachment to the life they had before covid, even for a short while - which displays the selfishness Wallace describes as inborn - and those who cannot fathom why anyone would not want to release attachment to their life as they knew it - which is sensible morals but similarly selfish psychology.
As an aside, I had forgotten it was in there but the section on suicide and why people commit it was striking and somewhat haunting given the authors eventual fate.
Anyhow, I enjoyed re-reading this one.
Four stars!
I think it might be this. The essay provokes us to adjust our inherently self centered default mindset: to understand others, remain alive to our senses in the midst of daily routine, and to choose which ‘earthly gods’ we serve or at least recognize we have unconsciously made such a choice.
Covid has been a terrible thing. It has also been a disorienting thing and that disorientation is not so different from what DFW calls adjustment in this essays. Three daily realities of life in lockdown approximate DFWs call to reflect and choose what to think about:
1. Our relation to others and their inner worlds: We have an innate understanding that everyone we are speaking to is suffering, to some extent, and may be suffering a lot. Certainly, we remain deeply selfish in our starting understanding of the world. But because of Covid, we enter conversations with a more sympathetic understanding of the person we are speaking to - and that is not so far from DFW's recommendation in this essay.
2. Our relation to our daily lives: We have each had to rethink the ‘mundane routines’ around which we had built our lives - not because of the metacognition DFW recommends but because they were simply not possible to do any more. For at least a few months, nothing was mundane any more.
3. Our relation to our, often subconscious, aspirations: Whatever ‘earthly gods’ we were serving prior to covid, the experience has in some way revealed their impotence. I am sure those seeking power or wealth or personal image or what have you still do so, but it must suddenly feel a bit more silly in a world where you sometimes can’t leave your own home or go to your favorite restaurant or take your kid to the park.
In my case, despite daily reminders to remain humble, no experience has been as effective at reminding me of the limits of personal understanding as this one.
On a social level, DFWs observations help frame some of the broader discussions occurring around the lockdown. in the US at least the recent news has primarily been between those who refuse to release attachment to the life they had before covid, even for a short while - which displays the selfishness Wallace describes as inborn - and those who cannot fathom why anyone would not want to release attachment to their life as they knew it - which is sensible morals but similarly selfish psychology.
As an aside, I had forgotten it was in there but the section on suicide and why people commit it was striking and somewhat haunting given the authors eventual fate.
Anyhow, I enjoyed re-reading this one.
Four stars!
The real education is more about how you choose the things to reflect on.
I would be glad if all the teachers would read it 🙂
I feel like those 18-year-olds maybe had no idea what he was talking about. But it certainly hits hard for people adulting for a while. I don't know what to make of the fact that his advice didn't work for him. Or the fact that being present in the moment only works for a short while before you remember you are rapidly running out of moments.
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