"This is water"

12/11/2011

1 Comment

 
I imagine that most of you are familiar with David Foster Wallace's speech at the 2005 Kenyon College graduation. 

For some reason, this simple speech has been returning to my thoughts a lot lately.  Re-reading it today for the first time in months, it seems way more relevant and also obvious than it did when I first read it as a junior at Notre Dame.  Specifically, that sense of the absolute mundane-ness of many an adult day.  Or at least of many mundane moments.  And having to buy groceries or cleaning supplies, procure coins and do laundry, or even just deal with catching my bus on time for the nth morning in a row.  Most of all, living in a big city, it's that having to deal with so many people in such a peripheral way.  That one chubby  guy behind the register at my Dominick's, who I angle for in the line because I know that he'll smile back at me and wish me a nice day.  I sincerely hope that his is nice as well, but I wonder.  The servers at my favorite cafe, whose quirky moustaches brighten my day when I lug work that I had to take home there.  What are their lives like as full-time coffee shop servers, even if it is a damn good coffee shop?  Then there's the late nights getting boring, routine work done.  And the people who are up just as late, studying in or keeping open the 24-hour Starbucks I frequent at those times.  The eating lunch at my desk because there is so much to do, and I don't have time to stop for much of a break.  The girl at the cafe in my building who knows some of my orders by now because of those days when lunch or breakfast means grabbing something hasty there.  The odd learning-to-navigate "real dates" with real, grown-up men - some of them as much as 10 years my senior.  The wondering where it will lead them, and me, and if either of us will even remember the other as more than a funny story come 2 or 10 years.  The scrambling to read books or to pray on the bus, on the train - the failing at times.  The not sleeping in or forgetting to work out.  Oh, grown-up life.

I know some of what I've said here, and what DFW described, may be part of your day as well.  So I'd love to hear - what are some of your "this is water" moments?

-LC
1 Comment
Adam F.
12/22/2011 03:05:38 pm

I just read part of his speech. I know this is sort of a cliché, but I think that much of the banalities of quotidian life can be avoided by finding a job that you really enjoy. However, I would like to qualify what exactly I mean by ‘enjoy’. I think that a serious error in thinking about career paths is to assume that your job itself should be pleasurable on the most basic level. I do not think that a job itself should always be pleasurable, fun, or entertaining. Such a view is far too narrow, and is only possible for a fortunate few. What I mean is that your job—or rather, your entire career—can be enjoyable if it directed towards a definite purpose whose realization is something worth striving towards. For some people, this is the accumulation of a vast amount of wealth, for others it is to serve one’s country and community, and for many it is simply to be able to support a family. The value of a liberal arts education is to be able to discern which ends, or combination of ends, are worth striving towards and which ones are not. I think that one of the reason why so many adults become depressed in their careers is that they loose that sense of purpose. They simply operate on ‘auto-pilot’, wherein the goal is merely to make money for the purpose of material consumption, without some higher purpose in mind. It was never like in the past. In more traditional societies everyone from the King down to the soldier and the farmer had a purpose or a ‘telos’ according to his or her nature, the fulfillment of which would lead to happiness, even if not in this lifetime. I am not saying that such a worldview is superior to the dominant views in our progressive post-industrial society… but it is worth thinking about. Ok- enough social commentary.

This may seem rather trivial, but one of my ‘in the water’ moments is when I think about the simple passing of time. This isn’t a concrete ‘in the water’ moment, but I think that thoughts can have an important affect on how we go about our days. I distinctly remember—about five years to this day—sitting outside in San Diego and with the acute sense of awareness of the transient nature of each day, and even our entire lives. As I watched the sun pass through the sky, I thought about how this particular day—just like the millions of days before it—would never come into existence again. For me, there was something remarkable about that thought that it left a lasting impression on me. First, it was humbling, because I realized that I would only experience a very small fraction of all existence. But it demanded a seriousness that is often absent from how I usually thought about my daily life. No matter how we spend our days, we often forget that the end of each day brings us closer to our own death. We only have a short period of time to do what we are called to do in this world.

These thoughts had been recurring to me recently when I was sitting in my apartment in Boston for weeks on end writing term papers, watching the sun pass through the sky and setting a bit earlier and further to the south each day. I’ll be honest: it was extremely boring. I have developed a new sense of urgency in determining what to do with my life in terms of an actual career. I had high hopes that I would continue with graduate school and perhaps go into academia, but I have decided against that path. I am trying to find a career that will enable me both to make a positive contribution to the world while also providing me with financial stability. I have many ideas of what that could be, but the problem is that they all seem equally appealing and mutually exclusive. So for me, I cannot allow my path in life to become too mundane. Life isn’t mundane; it’s serious. If it ever becomes mundane, then it probably means that I’m not doing something right.

Reply



Leave a Reply.