  On May 21, 2005, David Foster Wallace gave his commencement speech, "This is water" to the graduating class at Kenyon College. Unlike the typical uplifting and inspirational speech, Foster has a more serious and somewhat depressing address. He gives the graduates his description of what the bleak and boring day to day life of an average adult is like. Wallace also mentions how our "default setting" is to instinctively get annoying and be miserable whenever faced with inconveniences. The overall message David Foster is trying to convey is that life after college is difficult and sometimes unbearable and the only way of avoiding falling into our default setting is to fight hard to stay aware and conscience.

For Wallace, the most dangerous concept in his eyes is operating on our default setting. He starts by stating that our default setting is to believe that he is the absolute center of the universe. "Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence (Wallace xii)." This idea is apparently hard-wired into out brains from birth and is how we automatically experience our world. We almost never take the time to think how other people experience things. Instead we instantly interpret everything through our on self lens and fail to break through our default-setting.

Wallace uses a grocery store scenario as a way to show us our default setting at work. The story starts with an average day for a working adult out of college. David uses words like "challenging" and "stressed" to dampened the mood of the story. He makes it seem almost depressing. The story continues by going to the grocery story where we experience an even more gloomy and somewhat painful environment. "It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be (Wallace xiii)." Wallace describes the store as hideously lit and soul killing and over all the last place anyone would want to be. 

The grocery store story continues with a long frustrating checkout line and finally ending by being told "have a nice day" by what Wallace describes as the absolute voice of death. The point to this story is that this frustration and gloomy way we experience a boring task is just another natural default setting. We naturally get miserable and annoyed in situations like these and that’s where Wallace introduces the idea of choosing. In order to fight our default setting we must choose what to pay attention to and what is important and what it not. If we place too much emphasize on the miserable situation we are in, then you would truly feel miserable and pissed off; however, if you choose to look at the beauty around you then you will break free from the default setting. 

Another concept Wallace describes to be part of our natural setting is the need to worship. "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship (Wallace xvi)." This idea of worshipping can be very dangerous as Wallace explain further; however, it doesn’t matter who or what you worship that is the problem. The problem arrives from worship itself. Its unconscious and makes it hard to break free form your default setting.

Wallace uses the idea of unconsciousness to portray what our default setting is. "It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities (Wallace xv)." He uses that word to show how our default setting is simply our unaware selves. Its us not thinking and being almost zombie-like. Making choices purely on instinct makes us closer to animals than what we are lead to believe humans are like. Unconscious is dangerous is the more we act on our default setting the more and more we lose our humanity.

Wallace way of fight our default setting involves choosing and awareness. We must choose what we place significance on and what we pay attention too. However, we must also stay aware to the world around us. "The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race"-the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing(Wallace xvi)." In order to stay conscious and avoid our default setting we must constantly fight to stay aware and pay attention to what's going around us. Being aware of what's important or essential rather than letting the little annoyances of life get too us is what Wallace claims to the capital T-Truth. Its what keeps us from losing consciousness and falling into our default setting. 

"This is Water" is a commencement speech like no other. Instead of being uplifting David Foster told the graduates how the gloom of day to day life after college really is. The main message he is trying to portray is that our default setting is unconsciousness and the only of avoid it is fight to stay aware.
 