I came across a great speech a few years ago that really challenged me to think about how I formulate my thoughts and helped me to be more considerate of other peoples’ perspectives. The speech was delivered by David Foster Wallace, an author and English professor, at a commencement ceremony back in 2005 and it sheds light on how our thought process influences how we perceive things as we go about our daily lives. There is so much to unpack from the speech, and I encourage you to read and/or listen to it when you get the chance. The title of the speech is “This is Water” and here are some of the highlights.

He starts out with this:

“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?””

The point of the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

He goes on to tell another story:

“There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.””

With this, Foster Wallace is saying that we need to be aware of blind certainty, which is a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.

He then discusses our default setting for thought, hard-wired into our boards at birth. There is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Keep this in mind next time you get cut off in traffic and are pissed off, or in line at the grocery store annoyed with the slow clerk. The guy who cut you off might have a pregnant wife, or sick child he is rushing to the hospital. The slow clerk may have been awake the last 5 nights taking care of her husband who has cancer, or maybe he is beating the shit out of her, or both.

The point is, let’s try to step out of our default setting and be mindful of what others may be going through.