This
is Water: Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living a
Compassionate Life - David Foster Wallace
“Because here's something else
that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is
actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the
compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing
to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the
Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty
much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and
things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never
have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and
beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age
start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On
one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths,
proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The
whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and
you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship
your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud,
always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these
forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're
unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just
gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what
you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's
what you're doing.”
“If you worship money and things —
if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have
enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and
beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age
start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On
one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths,
proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great
story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship
power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over
others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart —
you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found
out. And so on.”
“Look, the insidious thing about
these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are
unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just
gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what
you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's
what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your
default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite
nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the
worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways
that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The
freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center
of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course
there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious
you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and
achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves
attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to
care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad
petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the
default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and
lost some infinite thing.”
“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. Because if you cannot
or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”
“I know that this stuff probably
doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I
can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away.
Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it
as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or
religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T
Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50,
without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness —
awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around
us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water,
this is water.” It is unimaginably hard
to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.”
“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?".....
It is about the real value of a real
education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do
with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in
plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding
ourselves over and over: "This is
water." "This is water.”
“It is extremely difficult to stay
alert & attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monolog
inside your head.”
“the patriotic or religious bumper
stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles
driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are
usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just
twenty stupid feet ahead in the traffic jam...”
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