“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?”
In this commencement address, Wallace reminds us that we often forget, or take for granted, the most obvious things around us. He acknowledges it’s difficult to stay aware of what’s happening in the world, especially when you’re too busy dealing with the monologue inside your head.
That’s what a college education is about, according to him. It’s learning how to think, exercising some degree of control over your thoughts so you can choose what to pay attention to.
Our thoughts affect our realities, and the ability to choose how you “construct meaning from experience” will determine the lenses from which you see the world and how you react in return.
This Is Water – Full version-David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech
Transcripts of the video:
0:00
the body feels like perspiring I’m
0:03
I did buy you go ahead cuz I’m sure going to Infect Immun
0:06
given greetings thanks and congratulations the canyons graduating
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class
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a 2005 there are these two young fish swimming along
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and I happened to meet an older fish swimming the other way
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who not to the man says morning boys has the water
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and the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks
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over at the other end goes
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what the hell is water
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this is the standard required interview s commencement speeches
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the deployment at the tactical little parable ish stories
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the story made it turns out to be one of the better
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was both really conventions of the genre but if you’re worried that I plan to
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present myself here as the wiser older fish
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explaining well water is to younger fish please don’t be
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I am NOT the wise old fish the point to the fish story is merely that the most
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obvious important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and
1:06
talk about
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stated as an English sons of course this is just a banal plotted to
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but the fact is that in the day-to-day trenches adult existence
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banal platitudes can have a life or death importance
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or so I wish to suggest you on this dry and lovely mornin
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of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed
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to talk about your liberal arts educations
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mean to try to explain why the degree you’re about to receive has an actual
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human value
1:35
instead of just a material payoff so let’s talk about the single most
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pervasive cliche
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in the commencement speech genre which is that a liberal arts education is not
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so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about
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quote teaching you how to think if you’re like me as a student
1:54
you’ve never liked hearing this and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim
1:58
that you’ve needed anybody to teach you how to think
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says the fact that you even get admitted to a college that’s good seems like Ruby
2:04
you already know how to bang
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but on a positive view that the Liberal Arts cliche turns out not to be
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insulting at all
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because the really significant education in thinking they were supposed to get
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in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think
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but rather about the choice what they think about if your total freedom of
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choice regarding what they think about things too obvious to waste time
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discussing
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I’d ask you to think about fish in water into bracket for just a few minutes
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your skepticism about the value up the totally obvious
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here’s another didactic little story
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there are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan
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wilderness
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what are the guys is religious the others an atheist
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and the two were arguing about the existence of God with that special
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intensity that comes after about the fourth beer
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and the ABS says look it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons
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for not believing in God it’s not like I have never experimented with the whole
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God in prayer
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than just last month I got part away from here than a terrible blizzard
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and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing and it was fifty people up
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and so I tried it I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out oh god if there
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is a God
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I’m lost in this blizzard and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me
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and now in the bar the religious guy looks at the ATS all puzzled
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for then you must believe now he says after all
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here you are a lot the eight years just rolls his eyes
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no man all that was was a couple eskimos happen to come wandering by and the show
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me the way back to Q
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its easy to run the story through a kind of standard liberal arts analysis
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the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to different
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people
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given those people’s two different believe them what’s in two different
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ways of constructing meaning from experience
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because we prize tolerance and diversity I believe you
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know we’re in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim the one guy’s
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interpretation is true
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any other guys is false or bad which is fine
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except we also never end up talking about just where these individual
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templeton police come from
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meeting where they come from inside the two guys as if a person’s most basic
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orientation for the world
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and the meeting of his experience were somehow just hard-wired like height
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or shoe size were automatically absorbed from the culture
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like languid as it how we construct meeting we’re not actually a matter of
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personal
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intentional choice
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plus there’s the matter of Americans the non-religious guy is so totally certain
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in his dismissal the possibility that the passing us como said anything to do
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with this prayer for help
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crew there are plenty a religious people who seem arrogantly certain have their
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own interpretations to
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they’re probably even more repulsive an atheist’s at least the most of us
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but religious dogma this problem is exactly the same as the stories
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unbeliever
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blind uncertainty a close mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total
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that the prisoner doesn’t even know is locked up
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the point here is that I think this is one part above what
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teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean
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to be just a little less arrogant to have just a little
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critical awareness about myself and my certainties
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because a huge percentage up stuff that I tend to be automatically certain %uh
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is it turns out totally wrong and deluded
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I’ve learned this the hard way I’m as I predict you graduates will too
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here’s just one example of the total wrongness something I tend to be
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automatically sure I’ll
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everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that
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I am the absolute Center
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up the universe the realist most vivid an important person in existence
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we rarely talk about this sort of natural basic self-centeredness
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because it’s so socially ripple said but it’s pretty much the same for all of us
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it is our default setting hard-wired into our boards at Burke
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think about it there is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the
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absolute center out the world as you experience it
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is there in front view or behind you
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to the left or right at you on your TV or your monitor
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and so on other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you
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somehow
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but your own or so immediate urgent
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real please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or
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other directed miss or all the so-called virtues
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this is not a matter a virtue it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work
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have somehow altering or getting free at my natural hard-wired default setting
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which is to be deeply and literally self-centered
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and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self
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people who can adjust their natural the faltering this way are often described
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as being
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well adjusted which I suggest you is not an accidental term
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even the triumphant academic setting here an obvious question is how much of
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this work but just in our default setting involves actual knowledge were
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11
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this question gets very tricky probably the most dangerous thing about an
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academic education
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at least in my own case is that it enables my tendency to over intellectual
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iced up
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to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head
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is that it simply paying attention to what’s going on right in front of him
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paying attention to what is going on inside me
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as I’m sure you guys know by now is extremely difficult to stay alert and
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attentive
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instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head
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may be happening right now twenty years after my own graduation
8:05
I have come gradually to understand that the Liberal Arts cliche about
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teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper
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more serious idea learning how to thing
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really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think
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it means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention
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to
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and to choose how you construct meaning from experience
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because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life
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you will be totally posed think of the old cliche about quote
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the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master
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this like many cliches so lame and unexciting on the surface
8:47
actually expresses a great and terrible true
8:50
it is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with
8:54
firearms almost always shoot themselves in
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the head they should the terrible master
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and the truth is the most to the suicides are actually dead long before
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they pull the trigger
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and I submit that this is what the real no bullshit value of your liberal arts
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education is supposed to be about
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how to keep from going through your comfortable prosperous
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respectable adult life dad unconscious
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a slave to your head into your natural default setting
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being uniquely completely impure really alone
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day in and day out
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that may sound like hyperbole or abstract nonsense
9:38
let’s get concrete you the plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet
9:42
have any clue what
9:43
day n day out really means
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they’re happy to be home large parts of adult american life that nobody talks
9:51
about mountains beaches
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one such part involves boredom routine
9:57
& pedi frustration the parents and older folks here will know all too well what
10:02
I’m talking about
10:04
by way of example let’s say it’s an average adult day
10:07
and you get up in the morning go to your challenging white-collar college
10:10
graduate job
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and you work hard for eight or ten hours and at the end of the day you’re tired
10:15
and somewhat stressed
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and all you want is to go home and have a good suffer and may be in line for an
10:20
hour and then hit the sack early
10:21
because of course you have to get up the next day and do it all again
10:25
but then you remember there’s no food at home you haven’t had time to shop this
10:29
week
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because if you’re challenging job and so now after work you have to get in your
10:33
car and drive to the supermarket
10:36
it’s the end of a work day and the traffic is apt to be very bad
10:40
so getting to the store takes way longer than it should
10:43
and when you finally get their the supermarket is very crowded
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because of course is the time a day when all the other people with jobs also try
10:50
to squeeze in some grocery shopping
10:52
and the story is hideously fluorescently let
10:55
and infused with soul killing muzak her corporate power
10:59
and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and
11:03
quickly out
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you have to wander all over the huge overlaid stores confusing niles the find
11:08
the stuff you want
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and you have to maneuver your junkie card to all these other tired hurry
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people with cart
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et cetera et cetera cutting stuff out as a solemn ceremony and eventually
11:19
got it you get all your supper supplies
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except now it turns out there aren’t enough checkout lanes open even though
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it’s the end of the day rush
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so the checkout line is incredibly long which is stupid and infuriating
11:33
but you can take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register
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who is overworked and a job was daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the
11:41
imagination a bit any of us here at a prestigious college
11:45
but anyway you finally get to the checkout lines problem you pay for your
11:48
food
11:49
you get told to have a nice day in a voice that is the absolute voices that
11:54
in and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your
11:59
car
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with the one crazy we’ll the polls madly to the left
12:03
all the way out through the crowded bumpy literary parking lot
12:06
and then you have to drive all the way home through slow heavy SUV in Times a
12:10
rush hour traffic
12:12
et cetera et cetera everyone here is done it’s a course
12:16
but it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates actual life routine
12:20
day after week after Mon after year
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but it will be it and many more dreary
12:27
annoying seemingly meaningless routines b-side
12:31
but that is not the point the point is that Perry frustrating crap like this is
12:35
exactly where the work
12:37
a shoes and is going to come in because the traffic jams in crowded aisles and
12:42
long checkout lines give me time to think
12:45
and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and want to pay
12:48
attention to
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I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop
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because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this
12:57
are really all about me
13:00
about my hungry ness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home
13:04
and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just
13:08
in my way and who are all these people in my way
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and look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and how like and dad
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i’d
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and non-human they seem in the checkout line where and how annoying and rude it
13:20
is the people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line
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and look at how deeply personally unfair that’s it
13:29
or of course if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts former my default
13:33
setting
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I can spend time in the end of the day traffic being discussed about all the
13:37
huge
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stupid lane blocking SUV’s and homers
13:41
and b12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful selfish
13:44
40 gallon tanks of gas and I can’t dwell on the fact the patriotic or religious
13:49
bumper stickers
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always seem to be on the biggest most disgustingly selfish vehicles
13:55
driven by the ugliest who this is an example have not to think that
14:05
biggest most disgustingly selfish people driven by the ugliest most you consider
14:09
it an aggressive drivers
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and I can’t think about how our children’s children will despise us for
14:14
wasting all the futures fuel
14:16
and problems growing up a climate and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and
14:19
disgusting we all are
14:21
and how modern consumer these consumer society just sucks
14:25
and so on and so forth you get the idea if I choose to think this way in the
14:29
store and on the freeway
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fine what service do
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accepts a big in this way tends to be so easy and automatic but it doesn’t have
14:38
to be a choice
14:40
it is my natural default setting it’s the automatic way
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that I experienced the boring frustrating crowded parts of adult life
14:48
when I’m operating on the automatic unconscious believe
14:51
I am the center in the world and that my immediate needs and feelings for what
14:55
should determine the world priority
14:58
the thing is that of course there are two totally different ways to think
15:00
about these kinds of situations
15:03
in this traffic all these vehicle stock and i doing in my way
15:07
it’s not impossible that some of these people on SUV’s have been horrible auto
15:11
accidents in the past
15:13
and now find driving so terrifying that the therapist is all but ordered them
15:17
to get a huge heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drop
15:22
when that the Homer they just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose
15:25
little child is hurt for said
15:28
in the seat next to him and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital
15:31
and he’s in a way bigger more legitimate hurry then I am
15:34
is actually I women his way
15:38
or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone
15:41
else in the supermarket checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am
15:46
and that some of these people probably have much harder more tedious or people
15:50
lives than I did
15:53
again please don’t think I’m giving you moral advice or that I’m saying you’re
15:56
sposed to think this way
15:58
with that anyone expects you to just automatically do it
16:01
because it hard it takes will an effort
16:04
and if you are like me some days you won’t be able to do it
16:08
or you just flat-out will want to but most days
16:12
if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice you can choose to look
16:15
differently at this fact that I’d
16:18
over made up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line
16:22
maybe she’s not usually like this maybe she’s been up three straight nights
16:26
holding the hand over husband who’s dying a bone cancer
16:29
or maybe this very lady is the low-wage Clark at the motor vehicles department
16:34
who just yesterday hope your spouse resolve a horrific
16:37
infuriating red tape problem through some small active bureaucratic times
16:42
of course none of this is likely but it’s also not been possible
16:46
it just depends what you want to consider if you’re automatically sure
16:51
you know what reality is been who and what is really important
16:55
if you want to operate on your default setting then you
16:58
like me probably won’t consider possibilities that are annoying
17:02
and miserable but if you really learn how to think
17:07
how to pay attention then you’ll know you have other options
17:11
it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded
17:15
hot slow consumer healt type situation
17:19
as not only meaningful but sacred on fire with the same force that with the
17:24
Stars
17:25
love fellowship the mystical oneness of all things
17:29
deep down not that mystical stuff necessarily true
17:34
the only thing that’s capital T true is that you get to decide
17:38
are you going to try and see it this I submit
17:41
is the freedom a real education %uh learning how to be
17:45
well-adjusted you get to consciously decide
17:48
what has meaning and what doesn’t you get to decide what to worship
17:55
because here’s something else that’s weird but true in the day-to-day
17:58
trenches adult life
18:00
there’s actually no such thing as atheism
18:03
there is no such thing as not worshipping everybody
18:06
worships the only choice we get is what to worship
18:11
in a compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God
18:15
or spiritual type thing to worship be a JCR Allah
18:19
ya away or the Wiccan mother goddess for the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable
18:23
set
18:24
ethical principles is that pretty much anything else you worship will be
18:28
you a lot if you work at money and things
18:32
if there were you tap real meaning in life you will never have enough
18:37
never feel you have enough it’s the true
18:40
worship your own body and beauty in sexual allure and you always feel
18:44
a good and when time in eight starts showing
18:47
you will die million deaths before they finally
18:52
on one level we all know the stuff already it’s been codified as Miss
18:56
proverbs cliches epigrams
18:59
parables the skeleton every great story
19:03
the whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness
19:08
worship our you’ll end up feeling weak and afraid
19:12
and you will need ever more power over others numb you to your own fear
19:16
worship your intellect the scene is smart
19:19
you will end up feeling stupid for on
19:22
always on the verge to being found out
19:26
what the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that the evil or
19:29
simple
19:30
it is that they are unconscious their default settings
19:35
they’re the kind of worship you just gradually slipped into day after day
19:39
getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value
19:42
without ever being fully aware that that’s what you do
19:46
and the so-called real-world will not discourage you from operating on your
19:50
default settings
19:52
because the so-called real-world man and money
19:55
and power homes merrily along on the fuel a fear and anger and frustration
19:59
and craving and the worship cell
20:02
our own present cultures harness the forces in ways that have yielded
20:06
extraordinary well
20:07
and comfort and personal freedom
20:10
the freedom all to be Lords of our own tiny small size kingdoms
20:15
alone at the center of all creation
20:18
this kinda freedom has much to recommend it
20:21
but of course they’re all different kinds a freedom and the kind that is
20:25
most precious
20:25
you will not hear much talked about much in the great outside world
20:29
wanting and achieving and displaying
20:32
the really important kinda freedom involves attention
20:36
and awareness and disappoint and being able to leave to care about other people
20:41
the sacrifice for them over and over
20:44
in myriad heavy little on sexy whereas every day
20:48
that Israel freedom that is being educated
20:52
and understanding how to think the alternative
20:56
is unconscious since the default setting the rat race
21:00
the constant nonsense having had and loft
21:04
some infinite think
21:07
I know that the stuff probably doesn’t sound fun in greasy or grandly
21:10
inspirational where commencement speeches posted some
21:14
what it is as far as I can see is the capital T truth
21:18
with the whole lot of rhetorical niceties trip the web
21:21
you are of course free to think about whatever you wish
21:25
but please don’t just dismiss it as something you’re lagging doctor laura
21:28
sermon
21:30
none of this stuff is really about morality religion
21:33
or dogma or big-city questions love life after death
21:37
the capital T true is about life before to
21:42
it is about the real value a real education which has almost nothing to do
21:46
with knowledge
21:47
and everything to do with simple awareness
21:51
awareness what is so real in a central so hidden in plain sight
21:56
all around us all the time that we have to keep reminding ourselves
22:00
over and over this is water
22:03
this is water the new it is unimaginably hard to do this
22:09
to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out you
22:14
which means yet another great and we’ve changed under the Nauru
22:17
your education really is the job with the life
22:20
maintenance is the more
22:24
with the way more the more light
