I'd not read this before, and I found it wonderful, in it's somewhat hopeless fashion. The commencement address to Kenyon College given by David Foster Wallace in 2005.
People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
When I say that having cancer was one of the best things to ever happen to me I can immediately tell by someone's response if they are well adjusted. While I use DFW's term, I'm not sure he had any idea what it really means as he seems to only be guessing at it in this piece.
We lived charmed lives. For us, work is a nine to ten hour day in which we often get breaks, a lunch, and frequently can do it from a chair. It pulls in so many resources that we not only have abundant food and shelter, but even for the lower pay scales enough to still "go out" from time to time.
When our work is over we get to sit on soft seats in a metal box that will whiz us over asphalt lanes to our homes tens of miles away. While using this congested system, we can choose to think about ourselves, others, or just day dream. We can listen to musics from any time period be pumped all around us. We can find out what is happening on the other side of our planet through the news channels. This is time, free time, time away from work, where we can just be with ourselves.
If we failed to spend a few hours every couple of weekends at the grocery stocking up, then we stop by and get nearly any food, from any season, from any where in the world... at our whim. We are offered frozen goods along side fresh produce and in one place. We can buy fully formed foods like waffles or cake. We can even drive-through stores where they will give us freshly cooked warm food for just a tiny fraction of our daily resources.
The benefits of this life are so astounding that we get the option of doing this on a regular basis, making it routine, while not only all of history would balk at the decadence but billions of people who still work 14 hours days, seven days a week, for just a tiny fraction of what we have.
All of this and so much more is why I am hard pressed to not smile, to not let someone merge in traffic, to not thanks the sum of human history for living hard lives.
In this is the real lesson that we need to teach our youth. That the world is what you make of it. That you can be beside that miserable poorly adjusted person, in the same situation, and yet live in an entirely different world. It is not about delusion or ignorance, rather those that lament daily life and those such as I are equally aware of traffic and obnoxious bumper stickers. I am aware that it could be taken away at any moment, aware of the billions who would kill for my life. I am adjusted. I am happy. I hope that those who get that hour or two in traffic choose to use it next time to adjust, to think beyond their small world of senses, and to appreciate what they have. In that is happiness.
The water is more pure and clear than ever. Some people just would rather focus on the bottom of the stream still having mud on it.
When I say that having cancer was one of the best things to ever happen to me I can immediately tell by someone's response if they are well adjusted. While I use DFW's term, I'm not sure he had any idea what it really means as he seems to only be guessing at it in this piece.
We lived charmed lives. For us, work is a nine to ten hour day in which we often get breaks, a lunch, and frequently can do it from a chair. It pulls in so many resources that we not only have abundant food and shelter, but even for the lower pay scales enough to still "go out" from time to time.
When our work is over we get to sit on soft seats in a metal box that will whiz us over asphalt lanes to our homes tens of miles away. While using this congested system, we can choose to think about ourselves, others, or just day dream. We can listen to musics from any time period be pumped all around us. We can find out what is happening on the other side of our planet through the news channels. This is time, free time, time away from work, where we can just be with ourselves.
If we failed to spend a few hours every couple of weekends at the grocery stocking up, then we stop by and get nearly any food, from any season, from any where in the world... at our whim. We are offered frozen goods along side fresh produce and in one place. We can buy fully formed foods like waffles or cake. We can even drive-through stores where they will give us freshly cooked warm food for just a tiny fraction of our daily resources.
The benefits of this life are so astounding that we get the option of doing this on a regular basis, making it routine, while not only all of history would balk at the decadence but billions of people who still work 14 hours days, seven days a week, for just a tiny fraction of what we have.
All of this and so much more is why I am hard pressed to not smile, to not let someone merge in traffic, to not thanks the sum of human history for living hard lives.
In this is the real lesson that we need to teach our youth. That the world is what you make of it. That you can be beside that miserable poorly adjusted person, in the same situation, and yet live in an entirely different world. It is not about delusion or ignorance, rather those that lament daily life and those such as I are equally aware of traffic and obnoxious bumper stickers. I am aware that it could be taken away at any moment, aware of the billions who would kill for my life. I am adjusted. I am happy. I hope that those who get that hour or two in traffic choose to use it next time to adjust, to think beyond their small world of senses, and to appreciate what they have. In that is happiness.
The water is more pure and clear than ever. Some people just would rather focus on the bottom of the stream still having mud on it.
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