
When living the life of an average American, day to day routines are a part of everyday life. In every stage of life, there is almost always a pattern set that helps us get through our daily schedules. For instance, children in grade school most often follow a schedule that goes as follows: school during the day, extracurricular activities (if any) after school, homework at home, maybe a few minutes for play time, dinner, and then bed. For at least five days out of the week, this pattern is repeated over and over again. As for an adult who is in the work force, their schedule looks just about the same, with only a few changes. Instead of school all day, obviously they will go to work, and play time can be replaced for a little “me” time. In reality, most of us follow the same pattern every single day. Whether it be school, work, or even both, our daily routines play a large factor in how we operate in general. When our daily routine is changed, and we are forced to do something out of the ordinary, it takes a toll on our everyday life, one way or another. 

 In David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water,” and Nelly Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad House,” they both have a way of giving the readers an idea of how our everyday routines and schedules have an impact on us and how self-centered it forces us to be. Wallace takes a route that shows his audience how routine controls our self-centeredness. As he speaks to the newly graduates of Kenyon College, he gives them the idea of how it will be when they finally enter the workforce, and how their daily routine will change substantially. Eventually, they will have to work long, hard hours at their complicated jobs. They will need to make trips to the store, and wait in those long lines while they’re ready to go home, sit in slow bumper to bumper traffic, and everything in between that comes along with being a “real adult.” However, Wallace explains to them that these moments are what’s most important when it comes to their daily routines:

Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way (Wallace 12). 

What Wallace is trying to explain is that we only look at the way things are for ourselves, because that is simply the way that we are set up. When our own routine calls for us to do something we don’t necessarily want to do, in an environment that may irritate us, we only think of how negatively it affects us. It never really occurs to us that the person next to us is just as irritated as we are, or maybe even worse. We never think about what the check-out lady has been going through lately, and why she has such a nasty attitude, or why the mom of the ten year old boy is ignoring him while he throws a tantrum in the middle of the store. It is the moments like these in the long checkout lines that makes us the self-centered human beings that we are. The way we see it, everything is all about us, because that’s how our everyday routines are made. Our schedules are made to fit us, and us only, so quite naturally, we don’t think of other people when going through the motions of our everyday lives. 

In Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad House,” which is based on a true story, Nellie used herself in order to obtain information about the inmates at a women-only insane asylum. She knew that there was something that wasn’t right going on in that place, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. In order to do so, she faked her own insanity, and got herself admitted into the asylum. In her ten days there, she had been through so much, and could only imagine how it was for the inmates who were there long before her, and would remain there once she was gone. According to her observations, they treated the inmates with the upmost blatant disrespect. They bathed them harshly, made them sleep on cold, hard surfaces, and gave them terrible food. She even witnessed one of them being choked: “…she [the nurse] caught the woman by her gray hair and dragged her shrieking and pleading from the room. She was also taken to the closet, and her cries grew lower and lower, and then ceased” (Bly 297). Watching the way these women were treated was almost unbearable for Nellie. It was completely unfair treatment. These women deserved justice, and Nellie was determined to give it to them. 

By the end of her ten days spent there, she came to the conclusion that most of these women were not insane to begin with. These women were taken away from their normal routines, and forced into new surroundings, which changed them for the worse. Because they were forced into an environment that was created to make them think they were crazy, it eventually did turn them crazy. Nellie even stated “…take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A.M. until 8 P.M. on straight black benches…and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment and see how long it will take to make her insane” (Bly 293). These poor women were turned crazy in a matter of months. Some of them could not even speak a word of English, and could not fend for themselves. They were put in this place that was different from the way they were used to living, and in turn, they became their own environment, which is common in today’s world. In fact, studies have even shown that when someone is exposed to a degraded environment, they are more likely to degrade themselves as well. According to researchers at a university in the Netherlands: “…if people see one norm or rule being violated, they are more likely to violate others…” (Holden 1175).  Because they were unable to hold on to themselves, and their past routines, they were sucked into a new way of life that changed them forever. 

Although these two texts have some significant similarities, they do have substantial differences that ultimately bring them together. They both speak on how the change in everyday routines can have an impact on us, but whether that impact is for the better or worse, is how these two points differ from each other. Wallace feels as though it is important to realize our own self-centeredness in order to look at the world from a different view. Sometimes it is important to see things the way the person next to you does, and learn how not to be so selfish all the time. However, in Nellie Bly’s experience, it seems apparent that it is important to be self-centered. Sometimes you have to think of only yourself in order to maintain your own individuality. For instance, if Nellie Bly would not have remained in herself, she too would have went crazy in those short ten days. She had to keep reminding herself who she was and that she was sane so that she wouldn’t actually go insane. All in all, the two texts show important similarities and differences that are able to help readers understand the importance of self-centeredness. 
