Every day people like students are in a rut of a daily routine. They wake up, shower, eat breakfast, drink a cup of coffee and go to class, get done with class, do homework and go to bed. People do this all day just to wake up in the morning and repeat it all over again, a never ending cycle if you will. The point is that, as a population people are alike. People have a daily routine that they must complete whatever it is that they are working for: a degree, a paycheck, a pay raise, a promotion, and/or an A in a class. However, people as a population should only let their similarities be their work toward a common goal. People should still be able to ponder in ways that make them unique. The only thing that can keep people truly independent from one another are their opposing points of view. If people do not think independently from one another, based on past experiences that lead them to thinking with their own personal beliefs, society will become one big ball of bias, thinking with one mind. This can be backed up by Wallace’s “This Is Water. By looking at the repetition of “you”, narrative of voice, and imagery throughout, we can see that Wallace is promoting self-power in the thoughts of one’s life. 

Wallace uses the repetition of the word “you” to reimburse the fact that “you” are the center of “your” universe. “The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, or to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV, or YOUR monitor.” (Wallace XII) The writer uses an interesting tactic in that passage. They capitalized the word “you” to draw more attention to it, and make it a word that the reader pays more attention to. Wallace uses this repetition as he is nailing the idea into the reader’s head that everything a person has seen in their life is from a first person point of view. Since this piece is a speech, the sentence structure is simple. This leaves the reader with a blueprint on how they want to understand the speech. The only way that the reader has experienced life is though their own personal life. This means that everybody else has only seen the reader’s life through second person point of view. The only person that has seen one’s life in first person, is that person. The only person that can interpret the speech how they would see it, is themselves. 

Wallace uses pauses in his speech to prove points that independent thinking is how the populations should think. “Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it.” (Wallace XV) Wallace interrupts his own commencement speech to state that the object of this speech is not to tell the audience how to think, or what to think. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He says that the progress of independent thinking is hard. It is hard to be different. What Wallace is hinting at is that people shouldn’t jump to the first conclusion that pops into their heads. It will take work, however once they are fully capable to achieve independent thinking, they can reach the conclusion that their experiences have lead them to believe. A child and a mother will most likely not get the same conclusion if they see a crying baby in the candy aisle with their mother. The mother will draw a conclusion of the fact that she is happy her baby is not crying in the candy aisle, and the child will draw a conclusion of the fact that the other baby just wants some candy, but the mother won’t buy it. If somebody has a perfectly clean record with the law, and another guy has a not so clean record with the law, they will both act very differently if they get pulled over. While they are very broad examples of independent thinking, they are still examples of how position and history affect how we interpret different events in our lives, through a first-person point of view. People may fall into a population, however everybody has their own story of how they got to the population.

There is a very powerful example of imagery all throughout the commencement speech that is immensely enlightening. “This is water.” (Wallace XVII) Wallace starts his speech by telling a short story about fish. One fish asks how the water feels today. After pondering, the other fish asks what water is? This can be ponderous to the reader as it is very intriguing food for thought. All of the fish’s life, it has swum through this invisible stuff that is all around him and he has never noticed it. Once the fish shed awareness on the water, a whole new aspect of what was recently invisible was now fully visible. The imagery of the water is the aspect of life that maybe involves a little more thinking to come up. The invisible aspects that have been around us, however we never knew about. The past experiences of people that we do not know. Everybody has their story, or their “water” if you will. Once we shed light on their “water” then we can finally come to a complete conclusion upon an action. The person who got in a car accident at three in the morning and was accused of driving drunk? Maybe his wife just went into labor while he was out of town and had to drive through the night to get home for the birth of his child but his drowsiness caused him to get in a fender bender. Maybe that broke college kid isn’t too lazy to get a job to help with his tuition, maybe he is purely too busy to have a job and is already working hard to pass his engineering classes. 

Everybody has water, everybody must work to shine light onto their water, and without shedding light, only that person knows about their water. People are unique. As a population, people should all think differently. Conform to their own thoughts, find their own beliefs and truly believe in them. If somebody disagrees with an opinion, then they are not wrong, they are purely disagreeing. It can be beautiful for people to have feuding conclusions. With the similar daily routines of waking up, going to work, and going home, people need to find what keeps them unique, so that they do not fade into a population. Only their thoughts, beliefs, and conclusions can keep them independent, and can keep them unique. 