

Life is about learning as you go. Having no clear plan and just taking the punches it throws at you. During his commencement address, David Foster Wallace tells the Kenyon College students that the world around them is very big and that they’re going to have to learn every day. He says what they have experienced isn’t what will shape their entire life and what they will experience isn’t all that is out there.

How a person becomes who they are is a long road tailored to them. Their parents mold them into what they want their child to be as they’re young, then the child grows up enough to be able to choose their own paths. Everyone worships different things and they are not wrong for choosing something different than you. Some people choose religion others choose materialistic things, and that is their decision. Wallace tells a story of the two men sitting in the woods describing the same situation but believing it ended up the way it did for different reasons. Wallace acknowledges that they would never agree on the same conclusion. Wallace says the things he believed in turned out to be totally wrong but that’s life. Sometimes you have to find out things the hard way. Wallace tells the graduates that they shouldn’t worship power or intelligence because they will only end up feeling betrayed by the world. The real focus he wants them to worship is freedom. “The really important kind of freedom involves attention... You sacrifice them over and over in the myriad petty, unsexy ways every day,” (XVI). He wants us to believe in freedom and know that it is our choice to be what we want to be. The world is our oyster and is never permanent; what we experience in our everyday life isn’t the only thing it has to offer. The freedom to do what we want is a gift. To not be at the whim of someone else’s desires and choose your own path is what life is about. Our past experiences don’t determine what we have to worship, and just because we worship something now doesn’t mean we will for our whole life.

Being self centered is a human habit. It’s quite common for someone to put himself at the center of the universe and not take into account anything/anyone around him. Someone’s day could be going horribly around you and you have no idea if that’s the case, so you can’t jump to conclusions. Wallace wants us to know that the world is a massive place, with so many different scenarios playing out daily. You don’t have to get mad for sitting in traffic because there could be an accident on the road ahead, with someone’s life hanging in the balance. The clerk at the super-market could be struggling to make ends meet and she has to pay her bills at the end of her shift. You never be sure what’s happening in another person’s life and to judge someone based on the 30-second interaction isn’t what we should be about. He says that life doesn’t have to be this way. We can, “[be] aware enough to give yourself a choice… then you will know there are better options” (Wallace XV). When you’re younger you get the right to be self centered because you don’t know any better. As you grow to see what this world has to offer, you should become more sympathetic towards other people and their situations. That’s what Wallace wants the students at Kenyon College to understand, that even though people have different lives

During his speech, Wallace stresses the word “adult” and how he hopes the graduates don’t get completely consumed by the reality that is about to face them. He wants them not to go through every day doing the same things and completely miss their lives around them. Being an adult we normally get trapped into a routine and we never realize life is passing us by. He says, “You graduating seniors do not have any clue… know all too well what I’m talking about” (Wallace XIII). He wants the college students to know that their past years of studying and part time jobs, is not how hard it’s going to get. They’re going to have to work hard every single day, and they can’t get into the rut of just going through the motions. Wallace gives a scenario of us going through life as a typical adult, with a job, and responsibilities. How we go to the same job, go to the same store, drive on the same freeways, but we never take into account the daily activities that we do. Life is short and you can’t take it for granted, but Wallace is arguing that people don’t experience life anymore. They just go day in and day out and try to just get through it. He wants the students to know that just because they have to be grown up, doesn’t mean they have to get in the rut that most adults are in. Life is full of choices, to choose to live life on default shouldn’t be one of them.

David Foster Wallace wants the students of Kenyon College to know that life isn’t always easy. There will be trials that they have to grow through everyday, but they can’t let life beat them. They can’t go into the tunnel vision of only paying attention to their own life because they won’t strive as adults. The students must understand that they are not the center of the world, everything doesn’t revolve around them. Wallace wants the graduates to know that they can choose what they worship in their everyday lives, and that not everyone worships the same thing as them. Overall the address is meant to make the students aware that it’s a long but short life; what we have experienced does not define us and what we will experience isn’t all that is out there.
