In the commencement address “This Is Water” by David Foster Wallace, a well known intelligent and “often darkly humorous” author, was presented to a graduating high school class in 2005. His plan was to talk about why acquiring a liberal arts education has actual human value. He believed that you get more actual value for yourself as a human being within the degree then the wealth you will acquire later in life. Throughout the speech he uses didactic parables, clichės, metaphors, and other methods to lighten the mood considering it is a high school graduation commencement speech. All while he also has a firm underlying that you must not limp through life dreading about the obviously unimportant. Instead you must choose to think about what actually matters that is coinciding with your life at that time. 

A statement by Wallace, “Think of the old clichė about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” (“This is Water” XIII). This clichė connects so closely with the argument because Wallace is trying to point out the fact that if you let your mind race and let it “think on it’s own” then you will be displeased by the outcome compared to if you chose what you want to think about. Considering this is a speech his tone is friendly and inviting to young adults. This attitude in speech works very well with how Wallace is also frank about the negative outcomes of thinking with a closed mind. Wallace believes that the actual value of learning how to think is not about the actual capacity you are capable of thinking, but what you are actually thinking about. 

The word think has numerous definitions and uses, and Wallace uses think ambiguously a total of 24 times in this address. Personally when I define the word think in my head it is similar to if you were to ask a child “What is air?”, they would probably respond with “The stuff we breathe…?”. Which is not a wrong answer, but it is not the full meaning. To be definitively thinking means you have a conscious mind with some reasoning or are remembering of past experiences, among some other situations. The point is that Wallace is attempting to get people to think in that very perspective. That some of the most obvious things in our lives are what we are missing the most, because our mind is just floating along and we are not consciously experiencing everything around us realistically. 

One of my favorite quotes in the address is “...: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.”(Wallace XII). I agree with this metaphor because I have seen first-hand someone who drove himself into such close-mindedness from the way he was brought up and the way he continued to think that now you can not even finish proposing something new to him without him already disagreeing. Wallace uses a little story about someone going to a long day at work, struggling through horrific traffic on the way home, dreading through grocery store lines, and the whole time the person’s mind is on “autopilot” and biding one’s time until the end of the day comes so they can do it all again tomorrow. In another situation he states how many people go through their day thinking in a way that they are the center of the universe and everything is revolving around them. These people are then unhappy with the fact that every single situation they come across, anywhere from bad traffic to a long line at the grocery store, is not tailored to their needs specifically. After these short stories Wallace concludes with the statement “It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.”(“This Is Water” , XV). Meaning that eventually you will be able to ignore the unimportant and think solely on what matters.

Even though he states an atheist in a parable Wallace believes there is no such thing as atheism because everyone has a “go-to” if they had to worship something, or even if an atheist doesn’t worship a divine being or sacred object there is something in their life the come to worship. He states that everything anyone worships besides religions will “eat you alive” because you will always be fiending for more and never have enough. “But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious.”(“This is Water” , XVI) this statement shows why Wallace doesn’t disagree with religions like he does with worshipping in general, because they are unconscious, and you slowly fall into it without realizing. That is exactly what Wallace is trying to veer away from because you must think with a conscious mind and make rational choices to what your decisions and their consequences are. 

In the last few paragraphs Wallace references freedom many times, because once you set yourself free of unwanted thoughts and start choosing what your mind is thinking about when you see everyday problems in the real world you lose the negative aspects of worshipping something that you don’t get fulfillment or freedom from. “The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.”(“This is Water” XVI) This quote is describing how we are all in charge of how our mind conceives and interprets information and we choose what we think of it, and that will set us free. 

“The real freedom” to Wallace is when you understand how to think and do so with awareness and being able to honestly care about other people and sacrifice for them on a day to day basis. Through the didactic parables, clichės, metaphors, and others Wallace brings a some-what nonchalant feeling to a nerve-wrecking intense moment for graduating seniors, and inspires to enjoy the life you have before you realize it’s too late. Using the value of education and self-awareness, although not even the actual knowledge acquired, will uncover what really matters and is essential to our freedom and happiness.
