
David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech entitled “This is Water,” to the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005. Through examples in his commencement speech, Wallace demonstrates how life is like water. Like water, life can flow, take shape, speed up, or slow down. All of these things can happen without any input from a person. We can lead boring and mundane lives or we can explore our lives with endless possibilities. According to Wallace, with a liberal arts education, an individual can learn how to manipulate or be more cognizant of life. 

To Wallace, education is important to expanding our minds beyond ourselves. Most commencement speeches give life advice to the graduating class. Wallace gave advice about life itself and how to use their education to really dive into it. He starts by stating how people without a liberal arts education see the world around them. They view the world revolving around themselves as if they were the center of the universe. “It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left and right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor” (Wallace XII). We can change this though. By being educated we can decide to stay in this default setting or have free will over what and how we think about the things around us. We do have to be careful though because once we break out of the default setting, it can be easy to over analyze the things in our lives. Too many questions can be asked without finding all the answers or finding symbolism in things were symbolism does not exist. We just need to recede to our education and how it taught us to think. Our liberal arts education taught us to ask questions about the things we do not know. It taught us to think critically and to utilize open mindedness to see things from an opposing argument or alternative perspective. By having the ability to use these tools we were taught, we have the ability to manipulate our lives or at the very least be more aware of it.

Keeping the theme of his title, the main metaphor he uses in his speech is the use of the word water. “’Morning boys. How’s the Water?’ and the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is Water?’ ” (Wallace X). In this quote, Wallace uses the word water in its literal meaning. In his speech, he is using the quote, personifying the fish, as an example of how people go through life. The example shows how younger people are susceptible to not being aware of the things around them, nor are they educated enough to find out. To fish, water is everything; it is what they live in and how they breathe. The older, wiser fish is a personification of an older adult: a parent, professor, or an older member of society. As described above, the older fish is more aware of the water surrounding him. The fish has formed his own opinion of what the water is like to him, but is curious of what opinion the younger fish might have formed about the water. On the other hand, the younger fish have not paid the water any attention and do not even know what water is. They are consumed by what is in front of them and not what is all around them. Later in his speech, he speaks about how a liberal arts education can teach you how to think; not so much on thinking itself but of the things you think about (Wallace XI). If the fish were better educated then they would have the ability to ask the right questions to find out what water is. A liberal arts education coupled with life experience can yield a better understanding of life and the ability to find meaning in the symbolisms and metaphors of life.

“The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: ‘This is water.’ ‘This is water.’ ” (Wallace XVII). In this quote Wallace’s meaning of water is life. Early in his speech he mentions how a liberal arts education teaches you to open your mind and think of other things that are around you (Wallace XI). To humans, our life is like water. There can be random currents in the water; most people would just focus on the current itself, but not on what could be causing the current. Getting a liberal arts education can be freeing. It can open the mind to so many new possibilities. It allows a person to see and think of things from different angles that they might not have been able to notice before. Wallace uses an example of an SUV on a highway to show this. The SUV cuts you off, you get mad because they cut you off. On the other hand, the SUV cut you off because a father was hurrying his son, who was extremely ill, to the hospital and might not have cut you off on purpose (Wallace XV). This example shows, that with a liberal arts education, we were taught to see alternate views of everything around us. With the education, we think of the different reasons as to why might the SUV driver cut us off, but without the education, all focus is only on the SUV driver cutting us off. We can decide to look at situations in our lives one way or another. With a liberal arts education we are taught how to look at situations from alternative ways that do not directly involve ourselves. For example, we could think about the possibility that the SUV might have had tire problems or that the SUV driver was trying to avoid debris in the middle of the road. A liberal arts education allows you to explore life as if it were water; learning how it flows, why it flows, how changing one aspect can alter the way it flows. With a liberal arts education, we afford ourselves the ability to make the decision to know what water is or not.

To David Foster Wallace, life is like water. We live in it; it happens whether we know it or not. The only way to truly see life is through a liberal arts education that can teach us how to think, other than thinking of ourselves. He uses the metaphor water to describe life because life is intangible. Water is real and it gives the reader a visualization of what life acts like. The choice is ours to stay in a boring mundane life or expand our mind by thinking in different ways. Even if we do not think in a different way, at least we can be aware of the life all around us. A liberal arts education can give us the ability to manipulate our lives and be cognizant of life.
