The Lemon Book Club - This is Water
A few years ago now, I came across a commencement speech on YouTube by the author David Foster Wallace. I had been listening to a podcast by Tim Ferriss, who said that he watched this video at least once a year to be reminded of Wallace’s insight. I can say that this has also become a habit of mine. I don’t consciously set a date to view the speech, but at certain moments it will pop into my mind that I haven’t watched it for a while, and that I need to remember exactly what it was he was talking about. And every time, I reminded what an important lesson it was that he had to share.
You can find several videos playing the speech on YouTube - just search “David Foster Wallace This is Water.” The speech is about 22 minutes long. There is only audio, but it is very telling to hear the passion and commitment in Wallace’s voice, the urgency and importance with which he was trying to convey his message. You can also here the audience - a graduating class of college seniors - laugh at the times when Wallace was not making a joke, but transmitting a truth that they did not yet have the experience to understand. I imagine that someone in that audience would very likely listen to that speech today with an entirely different perspective, and a bittersweet understanding of that with which Wallace tried to tell them. He tried to transmute to them a very important reality about our world today, and one of our best tools that we have at our disposal to cope with it.
The speech was also published in book form, with each page containing just one or two sentences, making it easy to digest and really think about. It is a different experience entirely - to listen and to read - but in this case I think they complement each other. I will not spoil the moral of the story entirely, but I will tell you why it’s important to me.
The first reason is that I am a chronic over-thinker. I have anxiety, and a very active mind. I pay attention to every little detail, and often my anxiety will just fixate on the worst possible detail or possibility and I could ruminate about it for hours. Wallace understood that, and understood just how many stimuli are fighting for our attention. And importantly, just how many distractions are manufactured precisely to keep us fixated on them - to buy something we don’t need, to spend our attention where it doesn’t need to belong. He highlighted that the most important thing we need to learn to do is to control our thinking, what we give our attention to - otherwise, we will succumb to those siren songs that the world is calling out to distract us with.
The second reason goes off of that need to choose what to focus on, what to give our attention to. Because we are the ones who get to interpret all of that information coming at us, especially in our interactions with other people. Wallace highlights that we can choose either to see everything that happens to us as an inconvenience, or we can expand our viewpoint to include how others factor into our ecosystem, and even more importantly, to try to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is something I am personally trying to work on more and more in my daily interactions. Because I feel that there is so much grief and sadness and cruelty in the world today. I don’t see why we can’t just be kind to one another. It can literally make the difference in someone’s day. In someone’s life.
Wallace committed suicide in 2008, about three years after delivering this speech. It is haunting to listen to or read parts of it now - as he tried to warn us. He tried to warn us that we must train our minds to guard against the unimportant minutiae that can burrow deep into our minds. And to open our minds to consider the best intentions of others. And very importantly, to remember that we are not the only characters in the story. Our perspective is not the only one that matters. And that very likely, in any scenario, there is someone out there who is worse off than us. Lest we forget to be grateful.
If you have not yet had the chance to read or listen to This is Water, I encourage you do so. It may take a few times, or to repeat a few parts, until the message sinks in. Every time I listen to it I am in a different phase of my life, I am learning new things, meeting new people, and having different experiences. And therefore, each time I listen to it, it takes on a new and deeper meaning for me. I hope it may offer the same for you.
Note: The header image was taken at the Aquaria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
