This Is Water Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

One of my favorite commencement addresses is by the late bestselling author David Foster Wallace. And in 2005 at Kenyon College, he gave this address that was later turned into the book, This Is Water.

And he tells this story about two little fish swimming down the, you know, wherever they're swimming in the water. And this older fish swims by him and says, hey boys, how's the water? And the little fish look at the older fish and go, water? What's water?

This is water is amazing.

You're having a David Foster Wallace moment where you're like, two fish are swimming in the ocean, and one is like... What's water? It's like you're in it, man.

These documents, to quote Oate's best-known biographer, skim the surface of events and sometimes present Oate, quote, as he wished to be seen, not as things actually were.

I came back to it and it really resonated and to this day I listened to it at least once a month I can almost recite it off by heart.

no one's an atheist everybody worships everybody worships something you worship your intellect you worship your body you worship money you worship power you worship something

I don't know if you're familiar with the David Foster Wallace Kenyon Commencement speech This Is Water which is really about empathy and awareness but it's really based on this joke of there's these two young fish swimming in this fishbowl and an older fish swims by and says, hey boys, how's the water?

He says, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge heavy SUV so that they can feel safe enough to drive or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him and he's trying to rush to the hospital.