Two fish swim together across the pond. They meet an older, wiser fish. He says, “Hello, boys, how’s the water?”
The two swim for a bit, then one asks the other, “What’s water?”
This story is from a commencement speech given at Kenyon College in 2005 by David Foster Wallace. Sometimes I think about more than technology. I’m interested in how to live a full life.
Wallace began with the common advice that college’s role is to teach you to think. The real point, he said, is knowing what to think about. Even more, to become aware of what surrounds you.
You’re tired and grumpy after work. Then you realize you are out of food at home and must go to the supermarket. It’s rush hour. Someone in a gas-hog SUV drives aggressively trying to pass everyone. You arrive at the store. You manage to find what you need. The check out line is long. There’s an overly made-up chubby woman screaming at her kid. The cashier says have a good day with the voice of death.
You think–perhaps that SUV was driven by a dad trying to get a sick kid to the hospital. Perhaps the woman at the store was tired after nursing a husband sick at home with cancer. Perhaps the cashier is caught in a dead-end job with many pressures at home.
Perhaps we don’t see the “water” around us. Perhaps we blame other people for things when we don’t understand their problem. Perhaps we think people are purposely out to get us when in reality they are just trying to get by. Just like us.
Perhaps by seeing the water, we can live a more compassionate life. And that would be good.
